


The Song of the Hound

by lifeofsnark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: A lot okay - Freeform, And obvs follows show canon where the books end, Bittersweet Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, For Me, He's a backhouse boy, I jammed an entire complex life in a couple handfuls of chapters, I know right, I promised myself I would do better with tags, I'm sorry for tag typos, Just... read both endings, Major character death - Freeform, Now you can choose which ending you want!, Sandor holds a lot of jobs, Sandor's POV, Sansa goes to Ramsay because I couldn't deal with Littlefinger's convoluted mess of a plot, The grammar is better in the actual story, The timeline has been sped up or slowed down in some places, This Is Sad, This is a mix of book and show canon, Whatever fit with my imagination, about the blackwater and sex, and I knew a RAGE, being teased for his face, but like, but the order of events is the same, but then I pictured little baby Sandor, completed!, consensual adult sex between Sansa and Sandor in a later chapter, covers burning of face through the end from Sandor's POV, i hate these things, in the style of the canon, like I made myself sad, okie dokie then, then a hound handler, then a smith's apprentice, this was supposed to be THREE chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-12-22 04:42:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11959956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark
Summary: Like it says in the tags: this is Sandor's story from the age of five all the way through the Battle for the Dawn. It's better than it sounds.If you're here for the nooky, it's in Chapter 8!  ;)Now completed! Choose your ending- realistic or happy.____________________________________________________________________________Excerpt:There were two more raiders total, thin, angry men who ran when they saw the gravedigger coming, his robes spattered with brain and blood.Sandor buried the brothers, buried the proctors, buried the Elder Brother. It took him a day and a night; they needed so many graves, needed words he didn’t know how to give them. When he had covered the Elder Brother with dew-dampened soil he stood straight, stretching his back, and looked over the rows of freshly-mounded graves. “I don’t know if this is my fault,” the novice said. “But you deserved a better world than this one.”He went back down the hill and into his shelter. It had been ransacked, but as he had nothing valuable nothing had been taken. He changed into the jerkin and trews that he’d first worn while here. In a shed he found his horse's tack, his armor (still bloody, still broken), and his sword.





	1. Chapter 1

Sandor ventured back out into the village of Lannisport a month after his life and face had been changed forever. Tufts of singed hair still stuck up on the crown of his head and his face was a mass of scabs, but it no longer oozed and didn’t reopen if Sandor made sure to chew his meat very carefully. 

He wasn’t really ready to leave the house, but his father wasn’t ready to leave him alone with Gregor, at least not yet. Despite what Allistor Clegane told the rest of the world, he knew the story his youngest son had told was the truth: Gregor had pushed his younger brother’s face into the coals of the cookfire and held him there while the child’s flesh boiled against bone. And it was all done over a little toy soldier, a castoff from one of the Lannister children. 

“What do you tell people when they ask about your face?” Allistor asked his son, turning the horse-drawn cart into an alley behind a strip of craftman’s shops. He didn’t nag or ask in a threatening voice; this had become the gentle interrogation of a parent asking for a rote answer, the equivalent of asking another child for his father’s name and occupation. 

Five-year-old Sandor didn’t look up at his father. “I tell them my bedding caught fire while I slept.” 

“Good. I’ll be back in a bit, stay near the wagon.” Allistor looped the reins over the brake lever and swung off the tall wagon seat. 

Sandor swung his legs back and forward, thumping them against the bottom of the wooden bench seat. After a few minutes he hopped down, looking around for a well or a trough. He’d let the horses have water before they turned around to drop this load of stuff off at Casterly Rock. He spotted a trough just up the alley, maybe three buildings away. He ran in between the horses and clucked to them, standing on the metal trace between them, stretching up to put a hand on each bridle. The team walked sedately up the lane, the cart rattling along behind them.

“Ho, boys,” he said, deepening his voice to sound like his father. Sandor liked the horses, he liked how big and strong and gentle they were. After several gulps the leader of the team picked up his muzzle, water dribbling off his nose and onto Sandor’s head. The water trickled down Sandor’s face, the water cool on the tight, itchy scabs. 

“What happened to your face?” Another boy was coming down the side alley leading a big bay horse; red and gold ribbons looped around the tack.

“My bedding caught fire,”mumbled Sandor, hating how the lie felt heavy on his tongue. 

Another boy, maybe ten, came trotting after the first. He was carrying wooden swords. “Mer! Mer, master says we can play ‘til he’s done at the steelsmith’s.” 

Sandor perked up. “Can I play? My father is a knight!”

“What do we want with a little piece of kindling like you?” The boys took off, leaving the bay tied to the hitching post by the trough. 

~~~  
When he he was twelve Sandor got a job as a backhouse boy in the Lannisport posting inn. He would clean beer taps, slop the pigs, scrub the floors, and live in the far-upstairs attic room away from his father. He didn’t mind being away. Gregor had gone off to be a squire for someone a year ago, and Sandor hated the pitying looks his father would shoot him when he thought Sandor wasn’t paying attention. Sandor liked watching all the people that came and went at the inn. It was easy for him to watch people without getting caught; nobody would look at his face for more than a second before looking away and not turning back. It made him almost invisible in his ugliness. 

The wounds were long healed, but looked no better for it. Scars swarmed from the center of his forehead over the tip of his right eyebrow and then diagonally over his face, just missing his eye. His right ear was a ragged shell of cartilage- the maester has stuck a piece of reed into the ear canal after the burn to prevent the aperture from closing over- and no hair grew on that part of his scalp. What hair he had was dark and hadn’t lost it’s baby curl; he wore it slightly long, so that it shaded his eyes and brushed over his good ear. 

One night, a few months after moving into the inn, Sandor was left to assist the innkeeper's wife in the common room. He grabbed dirty steins off the table, scrubbed them, and replaced them on their shelf under the bar. His hands were cracked from the harsh lye soap, but he couldn’t feel it. He was too busy moving. 

It was after midnight when the fight broke out. Most of the patrons had sought their beds, those who were left were the seriously inebriated. “You took my drink!” one of the men yelled, standing and lunging at his companion. 

“You took my girl!” the other replied, standing quickly, knocking the chair over. Sandor had been clearing the table behind them when the first blows were thrown. The first man careened into him, causing the tray Sandor was holding to fall to the floor in a crash. 

The man turned to him. “Wot are you doin’ in my way, boy?”

“Nothing, just trying to get out of it,” was Sandor’s response. 

The fight seemed to be forgotten for the first man. “Don’t mouth off to me,” he slurred. He lunged at Sandor, dagger drawn. Sandor ducked under his arm and plowed into him; he’d been backed into the wall and hadn’t had any other direction to go. 

The both fell to the floor, and only Sandor hopped up. 

The drunken man’s knife was embedded hilt deep in his belly, his fingers still wrapped around the handle. He pulled it out of him with a squelch and blood began to pour from the wound. Sandor stood frozen in place, watching as the dark, dark red of life’s blood made an increasingly large stain on the floor. 

“...Stranger,” the dying man mumbled, slowly tilting his face to look at Sandor. A dribble of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and he breathed his last. 

The innkeeper’s wife had come to the side of the fallen man after he and Sandor had hit the floor. 

“Stranger, ‘e called you. Stranger, like the god o’ death that takes us all.”

In the end, Sandor chose to leave. The innkeeper and his family were willing to keep him on, but they were religious, superstitious folk that never quite forgot that a dying man had identified a twelve year old as the face of the reaper.  
~~~

Sandor went to Casterly Rock at thirteen to see what employment could be found in the great Lannister keep. His father forcibly apprenticed him to the blacksmith. “Great big lad like you can do it. Honorable job, and safe. Blacksmiths don’t need to fight,” Allistor had said calmly, refusing to look his son in the eye. 

Sandor loathed the smithy. He hated the burning heat of its every corner, hated the wheezing gasp of the bellow, but most of all he hated the fire. The closest he would get was the bellow handles, he figured if the damn thing decided to spew flames or molten metal at least he was behind it. He was frequently beaten for this supposed refusal to work, his sinful and willful laziness. 

He was behind the furnace manning the bellows when one of the other apprentices set his shirt on fire. The other boy, Cassius, had been standing by the smith, passing him hammers and tongs and watching the technique used to fold steel over and over into a sword. He hadn’t been careful on the last pass, had dragged his elbow over the edge of the furnace opening, and the edge of his shirt had gone up in flames in a matter of seconds. The boy shrieked, a tea-kettle-high squeal of shock and pain that shouldn’t ever come out of a human throat. The fire spread over the rag tied around Cassius’ head, all the while Cassius beat at the fire with his hands and the smith beat at the fire with his heavy leather gloves. 

Sandor stood frozen to the spot, his face a mask of horror. It smelled the same; and for a second he thought it was his skin turning a charred black, thought that once more it was his flaming hair that sent a cloud of acrid smoke up to the sky. His face twinged. 

The spell, the fear broke and Sandor sprinted to the edge of the anvil and heaved the great water drum into his arms. He spun and flung as much water as he could onto the burning boy. The flames went out and Cassius fell to ground, twitching. The skin on his left arm and face and neck were black and crumbling. Sandor couldn’t tell if he still had eyes. 

Sandor had thrown up and the maester had come down from the great house. The maester and smith had murmured for a moment over the burnt boy; the boy that now looked like a Sevenmas cookie left in the oven far too long. 

The maester stuck a thin, hollow reed into a glass vial, capped the reed with his finger, and then forced the reed between the desiccated lips of his patient. He did this over and over until the body of the boy slacked. The maester and the smith crouched there, then, waiting, holding vigil over Cassius until the potion moved him from this world to the next. Sandor and littlest apprentice stood in the corner watching, silently thanking the gods and fate and luck herself that it hadn’t been them. 

When the maester stood and packed his little leather bag Sandor knew Cassius was dead. He shuffled off back towards the Lannister manse, chain clinking as he went. The smith stood slowly and then turned to their corner. 

“You,” he growled at the other boy. “Get out of my sight. We’re done for the day.” The little boy scampered off, feet thumping in their too-big boots. 

“Did you like it?” the smith asked Sandor, his voice quiet and low, a viper curled in the grass. “Did you like watching him burn, just like you?”

“No!” Sandor was horrified. 

“You just stood there, stood there and watched ‘im dance.”

“I put it out! I threw water on him.” Sandor was pleading at this point, as much as he could. 

The smithy squinched his eyes almost closed. “How’d you pick up that barrel? Got to weigh near a hundred pounds.” 

Sandor didn’t have an an answer- he’d just gone to the closest source of water, the big, heavy oak cask used to temper hot steel. 

“I don’t know if you’ve got a demon in you or the gods worst luck, but leave and don’t come back. You come back here, I’ll kill you.”

Sandor didn’t even wait for the smithy to move. He just fled around the smith and out of the keep. He ran until he had cramps in his side and then kept walking, shuffling as fast as he could until he made it to his father’s house on the village square.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor finds his father and sister killed by Gregor. After burying them he leaves his childhood home forever, seeking out the army forming behind Robert Baratheon. He manages to survive the Rebellion and then gets yet another job guarding the women in Chataya's employ.

The current Master of Hounds remembered Grandfather Clegane; the man who had raised dogs so loyal they fought off a lion. Sandor spent a year (it seemed he was doomed to work no more than nine or ten months in any one place) watering and feeding dogs, clipping toenails, brushing out coats, and helping bitches bring their pups into the world. 

He was happy for that year. The kennel master didn’t care about his face, and nobody seemed to give him a second glance, which was the way Sandor liked it. He frequently visited his father and sister in the village during his afternoons off, and Melyssa seemed to be blossoming under the tutelage of a local dressmaker. Their father was a knight, true, but no money had come with the title and little manor house. “Can’t eat a title,” his father was heard to say frequently and without malice. 

When Sandor was fourteen Gregor came home. At twenty one Gregor was now a blooded knight; an almost eight-foot tall warrior who rode a brilliant dappled Percheron as mean as its rider. He was full of news from the capitol, news of a mad king and a potential challenger from Storm’s End. He drank too much in the telling of this, giving details of how victims of the Targaryens seem to dance as they shriek and burn. 

Hearing this made Sandor’s face twinge and he was thankful to make his excuses and go back to the dogs in the Rock’s kennels. 

Sandor slipped back to the village during luncheon to see his brother off; a war was brewing and his father wanted the family together to say their goodbyes. When he arrived Gregor’s grey was gone. The door to the little manor house was slightly ajar and Sandor walked in to find his father’s headless body lying on the floor by his favorite rocking chair. Knowing there was nothing he could do for his father Sandor went to see what fate had befallen his sister.  
She was on her back on her bed. Sandor’s mind cataloged the other details of the room- the twisted, clawed sheets on the bed, the way the curtains lay yanked off the wall under the window, the smashed pitcher and bowl- before he took stock of the body sprawled on the bed. 

She was naked. Sandor wanted so badly to turn his face away but he couldn’t. Someone should know what happened to her, someone should stand witness to the things the gentlest, littlest Clegane had suffered. Sandor took one more step into the room, trying to breath slowly to slow the drumroll beat of his heart. 

Melyssa had blood everywhere. Her nose looked broken and trails of blood were drying on each cheek. Her barely-there, just-budding breasts had been bitten, one nipple nearly off. Her neck was purple with vivid finger marks, her lips blue and blood-spattered. She had blood on her thighs, a pool under her womanhood. Her gut had been cut open, but there wasn’t a big puddle of blood underneath her. She must have already been dead by the time her eldest brother had tried to eviscerate her. 

Sandor lost his breakfast, heaving long after he had anything left to come up.  
~~~  
Sandor buried his father and sister on the very edge of the Sept cemetery. He started just after the sun went down, one little lantern to light his way. He dug two graves; dug and dug until blisters formed on his hands and burst, dug until the shovel handle wasn’t only slick with sweat but also with blood. 

The sky has lightened just a hair, not noticeable to anyone who hadn’t been watching. Sandor threw down the shovel and walked home. He hitched up the team- the same gentle beasts that had been with him after his face was ruined on that trip to Lannisport- and drove the cart to the back of the house. 

His sister’s body, wrapped in a sheet, was gently laid in the back first. Sandor had also wrapped his father, but gentle wasn’t an option. He had to drag his father’s body by the ankles; a tear seemed to fall from his chin every time his father’s body knocked into a stair or doorway. “‘M sorry, father,” he mumbled as he scraped the body up into the bed of the wagon. 

On his return trip through the village Sandor saw a few candles being lit in the homes and shops bordering the street. He urged the team into a trot, wanting to finish his grisly talk before someone thought to question him. His father’s body was rolled into his grave, then his sister was slowly lowered into hers. His father’s head, inside a pillowcase embroidered by Sandor’s long-dead mother, was places on the corpse’s chest. 

Dirt was heaved unceremoniously into the graves. Sandor pushed the dirt with his feet when he could, used his hands and the shovel when he couldn’t. It was light when he finished, horses and carts clattering by on the road. 

The septon was waiting by his wagon at the bottom of the slope where he’d buried his family. “What happened, son?” the old man asked, voice too flat to be natural. He’d grimaced at the sight of Sandor’s scars. Now he wouldn’t look him in the face.

“My father and sister. Influenza, I think,” Sandor said. He’d practiced this lie, said it over and over in his mind. “Maybe the sweating sickness. Blood had come through their skin. I buried them before it could spread. Found them last night.” 

The septon took a step back. They were highly contagious diseases, he didn’t want to risk it. 

Sandor held out a silver coin to the man. “Could you say some words over them?”

The coin quickly disappeared into the voluminous robes of the holy man. “Absolutely. Where are you going?”

Sandor had unhitched the team lead. He used the edge of the wagon as a mounting block. “Keep the other and the wagon. I’m leaving.”

“What of the house?” 

“Give it away,” said Sandor, tying the driving reins in a knot. 

The big horse cantered away, hooves sounding like drums against the hard ground. Villagers were out watching him go. Sandor knew the conclusions they would draw; knew that the priest- who was significantly wealthier as of this morning- wouldn’t do anything to quell the rumors. 

With just the coin taken from his father’s house and the horse between his legs Sandor rode east into the rising sun.He plans to be a soldier: since death seems to be all he brings, he might as well get paid for it.

~~~  
Sandor somehow managed to survive Robert’s rebellion. One of Robert’s commanders accepted him into service on the condition that he survived the first battle. He gutted the first man wearing the Targaryen colors to approach him and carried on bashing people with his sword until the bugler played peace. 

After that one of the men would train him in the evenings on days that they marched and as long as the sun was high on the days when they camped. They camped more days than not, creeping slowly towards King’s Landing and the bulk of the Targaryen force.

Gregor was made a Kingsguard to King Aerys, followed soon after by Jaime Lannister. Soldiers whispered that the King was hoarding the most talented fighters close to him; that he knew the army marching behind Robert couldn’t be beaten in the field. Morale among the soldiers was high as a result and sparring partners were easy for Sandor to come by. 

As time went on most of the soldiers made the connection between the tall, wiry youth with half a face and the Mountain that Rode and began avoiding Sandor as a result. It didn’t matter than Sandor had never exhibited the same pleasure in violence for which his brother was becoming infamous. He was quiet and scarred and intimidating; he was related to the man that had apparently raped an entire whorehouse. It was enough. 

~~~  
“A soldier in peacetime is more pointless than tits on frog,” the old Casterly Rock kennelmaster had once said. Sandor found this to be unfortunately true: Kings Landing was glutted with able- bodied men and didn’t have enough jobs to go around. Sandor had developed a battlefield reputation of his own, and his scars and height made it impossible to go unrecognized. Not even the kennelmaster would take him on. It didn’t matter that King Robert had tried to knight Sandor for his bravery on the battlefield. “I’m no ser,” he’d said, as respectfully as he could manage. Robert had nodded and the issue had been forgotten... as much as either Clegane could be forgotten. 

Gregor was famous for two things now known by all to be true: He was eight feet tall and rode a horse weighing nearly four thousand pounds, and he had eviscerated and raped the Targaryen children he had been assigned to guard. This didn’t matter to the bloody Lannisters- he’d been given command of a group of Lannister men. 

After the siege of the Red Keep there was one group that was thankful for the surplus of unoccupied men in the city: the whores. 

Sandor was drinking in some pisshole a street or two west of the Fleabottom line when he was initially approached. 

He thought he was hallucinating when a tall, generously curved woman in a dark, slinky cloak sat at his table across from him. “Not buying,” he said into the bottom of his cup. He was down to his last few coins, and he plans to spend them on wine. 

“I’m interested in you,” the woman said, not removing her hood. 

“Oh fuck off,” Sandor replied. 

“Truly,” the woman said. “The stories of your temper do not do you justice.” She still wore a small, satisfied smirk. 

He leaned across the little rickety table towards her, letting his now-long hair fall in front of his eyes. “You want to see my temper? I’ll fuck you bloody on this table. Scurry back where you belong, woman. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

The woman never took her eyes off Sandor, just lazily lifted a hand in the air to summon the bargirl. Wine was quickly brought to her, and she took a sip. 

“You lie,” she said to Sandor. “You wouldn’t rape me here. I doubt you’d rape me anywhere.”

Sandor tried to ignore her. He wanted to get drunk enough to sleep in peace, but no. Even his drinking had to be fucking ruined. 

“Before the Battle of the Trident you visited a ...washerwoman’s tent. You gave her two copper pieces and afterwards fixed the support pole of the structure. She had brown hair and a birthmark on her stomach.”

“How did you know that?” Sandor was both curious and horrified. Curious as to how she could know where one soldier and one anonymous whore were nearly a year ago, and horrified that not only were his face and his skill with a sword receiving comment, but now his cock was getting public interest as well. 

The woman smiled in truth now, and she was incredibly beautiful. Sandor became only more aware of his own scars. 

“I am Chataya. I run a house of open affection near the Red Keep. We… ladies like to keep abreast of things. If one man is too rough, or one man, he does not pay, he is unlikely to engage the services of another whore in Westeros. We also discuss little kindnesses,” she said, staring hard at Sandor.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to guard my house, my women. You wouldn’t abuse the privilege, and it would give you a reason to fight arrogant, rich men.”

“You think I’m safe because of the word of one whore I met a year ago?” Sandor sneered.

“No. Your brother is a knight, but you turned one down. Your brother leads men, you refuse. Your brother rapes girls and children and women alike. You wouldn’t.”

“I kill people. I kill people and I enjoy it. Seeing death take a man is sweeter than what’s there between your legs.”

“And that,” Chataya said, “is what makes you perfect for the job.”

 

It wasn’t a bad job, but Sandor preferred watching over dogs than women. Dogs made sense. 

What struck Sandor first was that all of the women would look him in the face. He first suspected they were hoping for his coin, but he soon learned the secret: they looked at all men the same way. To the whores at Chataya’s establishment men were nothing but a walking collection of bad habits led by their cock and balls. It didn’t matter if they were noble or rude or tall or fat. A man was a man.

Sandor didn’t agree. It was the sons of noble houses that caused the most trouble. Many of them liked to hit the girls, to tie them down and beat them while their cock was still snug in the girls’ cunt. A few of the girls specialized in that; girls with lush bodies and hard eyes. Most of the women refused. 

Sandor now knew the music of shrieks. He knew when a girl was giving a customer a show; he knew when a girl was enjoying herself with one of the other women, he knew when a girl was in pain, too much pain. At that point Sandor would leave his post in the center atrium and bolt into whichever girl’s parlor. He’d pull the customer off, subdue him (with a variable amount of force) and then hurl the offender out into the street. When Sandor was in a good mood he’d toss the man’s clothes after him.

He’d expected far more fallout from this than had actually occurred. When he commented on the lack of retaliation to Chataya she’d laughed. “They can’t admit they were here, let alone what they were doing to receive such treatment.” 

A few of the women enjoyed teasing Sandor when they were between customers or before the brothel opened for the day. “Did you lose your cock in the war?” they’d coo. “You never come to visit us.”

“You’re doing just fine without me,” he’d reply, and they would run off in a chorus of giggles. 

Some nights, when the more popular whores were into their cups, they would come out and taunt Sandor. They’d lay each other out on great satin cushions, one’s head nestled between another’s thighs. “You’ve never tasted pussy, have you Brute? It’s the sweetest thing there is,” one would moan as she toyed with her nipples. Sometimes they would slowly, luxuriously lay in front of him, legs spread, and make him watched as they rubbed themselves to completion. 

One of the whores was quieter than the others. Penny never teased him, and would occasionally bring him a glass of wine. He’d had to pull the beaters off her more than any of the others, she seemed to attract them. 

One slow night she’d called him to her room. “Yes?” asked Sandor, peering into the crimson-tinted darkness of her parlor. 

“Come here.”

He told himself later he’d obeyed the command out of curiosity or duty, but the gods’ truth was that he was afraid he’d rub all the skin off his cock if he had to take himself in hand one more time. 

“I want you to fuck me,” she purred from her reclined position on the bed. “You sit there all night long listening to other people’s pleasure, and no one ever sees to your own. Poor Clegane.”

He debated for a long moment. She made his decision for him by reaching up to grab at the hem of his heavy leather and steel-scaled shirt. While standing on the bed she was tall enough to drag it over his head. “You are a great big brute, aren’t you? What a nice present for me.”

Her breasts were right there, right in Sandor’s face, so he sucked on the tip of one while palming the other. 

“Very nice,” Penny breathed. “Now take off your trousers.”

He shoved off his breeches and made to climb over Penny. She smiled and stuck a finger into his sternum. “You don’t just poke at a girl, Brute.” She shoved at his head until his nose hovered over the dark curls covering her womanhood. “Be a good boy and earn your reward.”

It was something Sandor had never done (well, he’d also never had a woman without paying first either, but he shoved that thought aside). She’d just bathed, the scent of the harsh soap the ladies used lingered on the soft flesh here. He wasn’t sure what he was doing but she didn’t seem to hold it against him. She poked the sides of his head if she needed him to move, and told him in no uncertain terms if he was doing something right. She shuddered against his mouth and Sandor kept going, hoping by now he’d earned his own reward. 

Penny was true to her word. After a few more deep breaths (that caused her breasts to sway in a hypnotic manner) she shoved him onto his back and proceeded to bring him to the hardest orgasm he’d ever experienced. 

Sandor worked at Chataya’s brothel for almost four years. He would wake around noon, spar with the knights in the Red Keep, and return to the brothel by supper. Penny continued her little lessons, as she called them. Sandor called them pity fucks, but he wasn’t about to turn it down. He could still count the number of women he’d slept with on one hand. Women always looked on his face with disgust, who was he to suffer their revulsion. 

One night after the doors were locked and the women had all gone upstairs to their sleeping quarters Sandor staggered across the courtyard to his little room. He opened the door and found a bald, round man sitting on his bed. 

“I wouldn’t have presumed,” the stranger said in a soft, lilting voice. “But it’s the only piece of furniture in the room.” He stood as Sandor entered the small space. 

“Get out.” Sandor unbuckled his sword belt and laid it over the top of the trunk that held his tunics and few possessions. 

“You haven’t heard what I’ve come to say.”

“I don’t care what you’ve come to say. You look like a cock with your little bald head poking out of that big pink dress.”

The intruder blinked. “I certainly didn’t see it that way.”

“If you’re not going to leave, at least tell me why you’re here.”

“Your… activities have been noted in the Keep. The Queen is looking for a man of your, well, talents. She has a job for you…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've written the beginning, the sex, and the end. I just need motivation for the middle bit! -Chris


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor realizes Joffrey is a little shit.  
> Joffrey tortures animals.   
> They all ride to Winterfell and meet the Starks.

The heir to the Iron Throne was five when Sandor decided he was well and truly a little twat. At first he’d just been a babe, a little maggot-looking thing that wiggled and cried and was tended by a small army of fresh-starched nursemaids. 

 

Sandor hadn’t been around a child since he was one himself, and so he wasn’t sure if it was usual for a toddler to relish in destroying his toys as much as the Lannister lad did. 

 

When little Joffrey was five his younger brother was two. The queen was distracted now; Sandor knew she was breeding again, knew this was another golden child planted in her womb by her brother. Tommen and Joffrey were left to play with each other under the supervision of two nannies and Sandor, Sworn Shield to the Heir of the Seven Kingdoms. 

 

The nannies were tittering things, Lannister cousins and nieces from less wealthy lines of the family. These two were some of Sandor’s least favorites. If they ever were forced to speak to him they wouldn’t even pretend to look at him as so many did. (People tended to stare at his chin or one shoulder when they addressed him). These women would avert their faces completely, staring off to their right and calling him “Clegane”. They were close friends and spent most of their time in the nursery twittering and sipping arbor gold. 

 

Joffrey took to pinching his little brother to make him cry. As soon as Tommen’s face screwed up Joffrey would stop, the nannies would glance at the tot to ensure everything was okay, and then go back to whatever inane conversation they were having. When the Queen asked him, teeth bared, about the bruises on her son Sandor mumbled something about the boys roughhousing and the ladies not finding it a threat. 

 

Their heads adorned spikes on the edge of the Red Keep by the next morning. All of the following nurse staff kept a wide berth from Sandor, shooting him fearful and hate-laced looks. Rumors were spread through the keep, rumors that Sandor had killed the nurses himself just for talking too loudly, whispers that he’d raped them like his brother before killing them at the Queen’s command. 

 

The best part of being the personal bodyguard of a bloody Lannister was the fact that he now had enough status to spar with members of the Kingsguard. These sparring sessions- with blunted swords, the fucking shits- were the only time that Sandor was able to really forget. The exhilaration of dodging sword blows wiped away the shame of his brother, the shame of being a guard dog for the Lannister whelp. When he saw fear in a man’s eyes during a fight he knew the man was afraid because he faced the Stranger, not because he’d glanced across a dim room and glimpsed Sandor’s face. 

 

He didn’t- couldn’t- compete in the tournaments held on feast days in the keep. Jousting was for knights, and in Sandor’s mind, it was for little boys who’d never seen war. A real battle had nothing in common with the colored nancys galloping their pretty, delicate horses at each other. Tournaments didn’t matter.

 

When the king-to-be turned ten Sandor knew something that no one else has realized: the boy was a sadist, touched by the madness of King Aerys before him, the madness of Gregor Clegane. Sandor didn’’t fear the child, no longer feared anything but burning his way into the Stranger’s grasp, but he knew that soon other people would. 

 

The first time he is asked to remove a little dead cat from the prince’s bedchambers he thinks nothing of it. The Red Keep is full of the damn things, slinking and quiet, weaving through the shadows. Tommen loves them; he has a kitten that lives in his rooms and eats out of cut crystal dishes. It’s one of the few absurdities of life in the Red Keep that Sandor doesn’t resent; he’s seen the kitten and little boy chasing sunbeams in the courtyard together. It’s like watching something from another world, an alien thing come to the Seven Kingdoms, but it’s still one of the nicer things Sandor has seen. 

 

When Sandor is asked to remove another dead cat the next week he immediately sees that this one is soaking wet, its fur clumped and matted. There are puddles of water on the floor around the wash basin, and the prince has scratches up and down his arms. Joffrey doesn’t seem to notice these, his eyes sparkle when he commands Sandor  _ to dispose of the vermin.  _

 

Dogs begin to appear along with blood spatters. Still it is Sandor who is tasked to remove them, Sandor who sees the confidence and insane, backlit glow grow in Prince Joffrey’s eyes. The boy spends time with his grandfather learning military strategy. He spends time with his lady mother, with tutors (generally in the morning while Sandor spars and tries to forget that he is just another plaything of the Lannisters), but his free time is always watched over by Sandor. 

 

Joffrey is eleven the first time he makes Sandor watch him kill a dog. It was some kind of terrier, small with black-button eyes and a whole body that wiggled for attention. “Hound, look,” Joffrey had called, setting the dog on his dining table. Joffrey skinned the dog, ignoring its howls and yips and whines. “Look in its eyes, Hound. It knows it’s dying, it wants to die.” 

 

The blood-spattered princeling drew out his game for a few moments more before the dog breathed its last. “Dispose of it while I bathe,” came the now-familiar command. Sandor wrapped the mangled thing in a dirty bath towel and carried it through the keep.

 

That night the head cook, the master of hounds, and the guards on the Gate of Fleas received a visit. “You will stop feeding dogs,” growled the Hound, his hair covering his right eye, the silver left piercing the plump woman he’d found scrubbing counters. “You will not feed them, you will not let your staff feed them, you will secure the rubbish bins so than animals cannot get in them.”

 

“They don’t harm no one,” the cook quavered.

 

Sandor leaned closer, letting his height and bulk loom over the woman, forcing her to lean her neck back to maintain her terrified look at his fucking  _ chin _ . “I will know. I will know if you disobey. Do you want to end up like those  Lannister nursemaids?” He let the question linger in the air as he swept out the servant’s entrance. 

 

The Master of the Hounds was smoking one last pipe in his wooden rocking chair by the kennel door. A tall-giant- figure in a dark gray, maybe green cloak stopped a few feet away from him. “After tonight,” said the figure in a voice as rough as the homespun he wore, “you will ensure that all of your animals are accounted for at all times. Do not let the well-trained ones roam if you value their lives. 

 

The kennel master nodded. 

 

“You will also do everything in your power to ensure that no strays make it inside the walls of the keep. I don’t want to visit you again.”

 

The figure disappeared into the gloom of the darkening night. 

 

There were typically four castle guards assigned to each of the gates in the wall surrounding Kings Landing. Two stood guard and they rotated through as needed. The men in the guardhouse on the gate in and out of Fleabottom were surprised when a green-cloaked man walked out of the mist carrying a wood-slatted crate filled with straw and the sound of unhappy cats. 

 

“You,” he said, pointing to the youngest of the three men lounging inside with warmed wine, “will ride past the lookout tower on the King’s Road and let them out in the forest. 

 

The still-pimply guard barked a laugh. “On whose orders am I supposed to take a bunch of fucking cats on a stupid picnic?”

 

The crate was placed on the floor and then in a blur the hood of the cloak was pushed back and a massive hand was wrapped around the kid’s throat. 

 

“Mine,” growled the Hound, the scars covering his face even more horrifying only inches from the guard’s own. 

 

The youth nodded and the hound swept out. 

 

~~~

 

Her hair was a streak of brilliant red in a world of grey and white gloom. The girl reminded Sandor of the redbirds he’d seen on the road to Winterfell, their feathers fluffed against the cold as they huddled in bushes bereft of summer leaves. She was behind her lady mother, only visible when Ned and Catelyn Stark stepped forward to greet the King and Queen. She was dressed in grey like the rest of her family, like the retainers and bannermen scattered through the small courtyard.  

 

After a few minutes of perfunctory introductions the groups began to intermingle and dissolve. The Queen was escorted inside by her brother and Lady Catelyn while herding the three younger Starks with Tommen and Myrcella.  Robert and Ned strode off towards the east side of the keep (and the crypt beneath it), leaving the Hound in the yard with Joffrey, the red-haired Stark, and the little fucking Imp. 

 

The girl glanced at Joffrey again, blushed, and scampered away.  _ Fly away from this one, little girl _ Sandor thought to himself. Joffrey was especially volatile today; full of pique from being forced to ride in the padded carriage with his mother and siblings. He had been too embarrassed to ride his tall, fat little pony among the soldiers and the Hound. His mother wouldn’t let him ride a warhorse of his own until his fourteenth name-day, a slight he had yet to get over. 

 

“What do they  _ do  _ up here?” he sneered, glancing around the slushy grey yard. 

 

“Fuck or freeze,” Tyrion mumbled into a wineskin. Sandor glared down at the Imp, the Halfman of Casterly Rock. Joffrey, thank the gods, made a face at his uncle and stalked off towards the armory. 

 

“Don’t give him any ideas,” the Hound growled at Tyrion. “He’s bad enough without your poisons in his head.” Sandor stomped off after his charge. 

 

There may not have been much to interest a fickle young boy in the north, but it was an eventful visit. Ned Stark was guilted into serving as Hand of the King, Sansa was informally betrothed to Joffrey to seal that deal, and another of the Stark children was crippled for life after a fall. 

 

Sandor and the rest of the company rode out of the Stark keep after just one week, the grey wolf seeming to writhe on the great banner overhead.  _ One royal visit, one visit from these fucking pricks, and the Starks of Winterfell have been split in half. Some to stay here, others to travel into the Lion’s Den. We might as well count them all dead now.  _

~~~

Life among the Starks, even temporarily, felt life life with a group of tall, thin invaders from another world. The daughters couldn’t stand each other, but banded together when one felt an injustice had been done to a member of the family. Ned seemed equal parts exasperated and terrified for his daughters, and Sandor briefly pitied the man before mentally cursing him for his stupidity. Sandor eventually realized he was seeing how a normal family behaved. Unlike his family the children had a mother and none of the kids showed a talent for murder.  He’d witnessed the workings of the Lannisters and wasn’t that just a fucking happy house. No one trusted the other, their mother only saw the children the during scheduled visits, and sometimes it appeared that Robert had trouble remembering their names. No, the Starks seemed to love each other. Watching them made Sandor want wine.

 

On the journey south Sandor learned something else. It happened just like that flash of knowledge Sandor experienced when Joffrey was five, when Sandor realized the prince was a little spoiled cunt: Sansa Stark was fucked. 

 

She was close-by when the wolf-bitch attacked the Prince, she tried to defend the Prince’s behavior, she cried when her wolf died… she was soft and innocent and desperate to become a southern lady… and now Joffrey knew that too

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been putting off writing the scene where Joffrey has Sansa beaten in the throne room, and the blackwater, and uhg. So much canon stuff to cover! The story is pretty much done from the fight with Brienne onwards. Motivate meeee. 
> 
> Thank you for getting this far!
> 
> -Chris


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joffrey moved up from dogs and cats.  
> Sandor gives Sansa his cloak. 
> 
> -This has that throne-room beating scene, so feel free to skip it. We all know what happens.-

Once again Sandor felt like he must stand as a witness. Joffrey had a new favorite toy, which meant the dogs and cats of the keep were safe, but this was worse. So much worse. 

 

Little red-haired Sansa Stark had become the whipping girl of Sandor’s evil little charge. It didn’t matter that he hated the little Stark bitch, hated her fear of him, hated her for believing that anyone here could be happy, that anything could be like her precious ballads of  _ noble fucking knights _ and cocksucking _ honorable warriors _ . 

 

He hated those songs. He hated the lies that they told: killing was killing. It didn’t matter if it was done by a knight or a common soldier or a spearwife who was hit one too many times. It didn’t matter  _ because the other person ended up just as fucking dead.  _ The supposed honor of the killing was decided by the victor, not some fucking code.  

 

Now it didn’t matter that he hated her, this stupid red-haired little cunt. He will stand silent and he will watch every slight done to her, he will witness every lash and welt and fucking _ burn  _ the prince and his “honorable” guard bestow upon this girl. It seems only right. Most of her family was dead, the remaining members scattered to the winds, and she had been left alone here in a nest of lions and vipers and predators all schooled in the games they played. She was a soft, song-loving creature caged with birds of prey. 

 

It started off small enough. Whenever the prince and Meryn Trant or Ser Boros would pass Sansa in the hall one of them would whack her with the flat of his sword. It was a punishment used on foul-mouthed or lazy squires and though humiliating for a lady, left no lasting damage. 

 

Everything escalated when King Robert died and Joffrey became King. He stopped respecting his mother, stopped fearing his grandfather, stopped pretending that pain didn’t please him. He was thirteen and the most dangerous man in the Seven Kingdoms… and little Lady Sansa belonged to him.

 

He went to her rooms the night after his first feast as King. “I saw you tonight. I saw you smile at Ser Lorace. You’re nothing better than a whore.”

 

“I’m sorry, your grace, he made a joke about the minstrel-”

 

“Your smiles are mine,” said the king who was just shy of his thirteenth name-day. He was still smiling his insane little grin. “You are  _ mine _ . I think we should remind her of that, shouldn’t we Ser Merryn?”

 

The whitecloak stepped forward, ready to serve. 

 

“Take your dagger, yes, and cut open the bodice of her dress.” 

 

Sansa blanched and Ser Meryn stepped forward, his brows furrowed in pleased concentration. He sliced open the bodice of her dress, baring her little titlets to the cool evening air. 

 

Joffrey strolled towards the girl, one hand theatrically cupping his chin as he thought. He lightly tapped the upper curve of her left breast. “This one, I think. Right over her heart. My initials, please Ser Merryn.”

 

The Hound stood at his post in the shadows by the door. The girl whimpered and twitched as Ser Meryn pressed his dagger into her skin. 

 

“Boros, hold her,” ordered the king. He stood off to the side, staring between Merryn and Sansa’s bodies. 

 

Boros stood pressed against Sansa’s back, gripping her arms tightly. 

 

“Proceed,” hissed Joffrey, and Sandor could almost see the king with blood dripping from his sharp little teeth. 

 

Sansa whimpered and moaned and finally screamed, a high, shrill wail. When Ser Merryn stepped back Sandor was able to see little streams of blood flowing from the letters  _ KJB  _ etched deeply- too deeply for such a game- into Sansa’s left breast. 

 

“Hopefully that will help you remember your place,” muttered Joffrey, and he left the room. Sandor followed, the last into the hall. 

 

When he had been dismissed from Joffrey’s side for the night (he now rotated through night duty with the rest of the Kingsguard) he found a maester and sent him to the little bird’s room. “Clean her up and see that infection doesn’t set in,” he growled. “And speak of this to  _ no one.”  _

 

“Of course, of course; a maester never speaks of-”

 

_ “Go,”  _ growled the Hound, and the maester scurried away, chains clinking. 

 

A week after the initial incident Joffrey returned to Sansa’s rooms. He dismissed her maid and stood a few feet in front of Sansa. “Mother tells me that when you flower we shall still be wed. I’m to get a son on you as soon as I can, the true heir to Winterfell, and finally the North will come to heel. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You told me once you wanted beautiful golden babies to love. You do still feel that way, don’t you?” His eyes glittered, daring Sansa to tell him the truth.

 

“I will like that very much Your Grace,” she replied, his face remaining impassive. 

 

“Good. Unlace your bodice.”

 

Sansa did as requested, Sandor could see her thin little fingers trembling from across the room. 

 

“Ser Boros, let’s make sure Lady Sansa’s memory doesn’t fade too quickly. Open her letters.” 

 

Ser Boros used the edge of his dagger to rip the scabs off Lady Sansa’s breast. They were more crooked than before, but still clearly showed. The king stood by her little dining table stirring a spoonful of salt into a cup of water. He stirred in more and more until no more salt would dissolve. 

 

“Can’t have this getting infected, can we? You need to be healthy to bear my children.” He slowly poured the salted water over her wound, enjoying the way tears slowly trickled down her cheeks. 

 

Sandor walked out of the room behind his king.  _ She didn’t whimper  _ he thought.  _ The stupid little songbird may have some wolf in her yet.  _

~~~

 

Joffrey didn’t draw her blood again for several months, not until her brother in the North won a decisive victory over the Lannister force. He was told the news as he dressed, the raven having flown in during the wee hours of the morning. “Hound!” Joffrey screeched, shrugging into a scarlet short-coat made heavy by dense embroidery in gold threat. 

 

Sandor stepped into the King’s chambers from his post by the door, his spanking new Kingsguard cloak still an unfamiliar weight on his shoulders. “Your grace.”

 

“Bring Sansa to me in the throne room,” the boy snarled, features distorted. 

 

“Yes, your grace.” Sandor left the room, the sound of his chainmail shirt jangling loudly in his own ears. 

 

He paused for a moment in the Women’s Wing, standing just in front of Sansa’s door. He took a deep breath and didn’t do something so definite as pray, didn’t even wish, but allowed himself one small second of regret. 

 

Sansa answered the knock herself. She was in a plain dress, as these things went, and her garnet hair was once again in an elaborate style that reminded Sandor of the Queen. 

 

“The King wants you in the throne room.” Sansa blanched but nodded to her handmaid before closing the door behind her. 

 

“What have I done?” she asked him. He saw her sneak a peek at him from the corner of her eye.

 

“Not you, little bird, your brother in the north. He won a large battle over the Lannister army, more houses than ever are rallying to his side.”

 

Sansa went even whiter and he saw her fists clench. She kept walking, though, she didn’t bed or plead, and for that he had to admire her. Truth be told this Stark seemed the most like her father. Eddard had assumed that people would act honorably and logically. It had been what got him killed. Eddard had also walked bravely to his death. Maybe it was a northern thing, a genetic ability to hide one’s emotions. 

 

If it was, the talent was serving the daughter better than the father. 

 

“I need to send your traitor brother a message,” said Joffrey from his sprawl on the Iron Throne. “Something that will hit a little closer to home, perhaps. Ser Meryn?”

 

Ser Meryn walked up to Sansa, his white cloak swirling, and punched her hard in the stomach. She doubled over with a gasp and he smacked her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground. 

 

“I think my lady is overdressed,” Joffrey said, now standing on the edge of the throne’s platform. 

 

Meryn slit the laces on the back of Sansa’s dress and yanked hard at the material. It slid down under her breasts and she yanked it to her there, the soft material clutched to her chest beneath her stays. 

 

Ser Meryn hit her with the flat of his sword then and she cried out in surprise as much as in pain. 

 

“Louder!” screamed Joffrey. “Your brother can’t hear you!”

 

Sandor was in his usual spot on the left side of the dais, a spot that gave him an unfortunately clear view of the mockery done in front of him in the name of fucking honor. 

Meryn struck her again, and his arm must have already been tired because after the flat of the blade struck it slid down just a bit, leaving a thin red mark. He hit her again, the sword slid, and a different cut appeared. The worst was on her shoulder blade, where the angle of the bone and the angle of the falling sword had not agreed. 

 

It took only minutes, ten at most, before Tyrion, the Imp of Casterly Rock and Acting Hand of the King entered the room. “What is the meaning of this?” he yelled, striding towards the throne. 

 

“What kind of knight beats a helpless girl?” Tyrion hissed at Ser Meryn. 

 

“The kind that serves his king,” Ser Meryn said, drunk on pomposity and  _ honor.  _

 

Sandor hoped he could convince Ser Meryn to spar with him again some morning. Accidents were so common on the practice field. 

 

“Somebody get the girl something to cover herself with!” Tyrion yelled at the room at large. 

 

The king was distracted by his Uncle, not sure if he should listen to the little Hand or scream him down for treason. Sandor took the opportunity to step to the side of the little Stark girl was knelt crumpled on the floor. He didn’t look at her, wasn’t even sure he could  _ make  _ himself look at her, but yanked hard on his cloak until the snaps gave and he could drop it over her shoulders. 

 

He was the only one who heard  _ thank you, thank you ser.  _

 

Sandor thought she’d been through enough without him reminding her that he wasn’t a ser.

 

[Sansa took the cloak back out later that night, out from the drawer where she’d stuffed it. It was heavy, lined with a stiff brocade that probably made it hang  _ just so  _ from the polished armor of the Kingsguard. She’d thought that when she received a heavy cloak like this for the first time it would be from her husband, from a man that would treat her gently and take her to a beautiful, warm home.]

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is slow (and boring, in my opinion. So is the Blackwater chapter next. It's just all been done, you know?). Thank you for getting here, and I PROMISE that things get more interesting in the Sandor/Arya adventure chapter.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Battle of the Blackwater.  
> Sandor visits Sansa's room.   
> He gives her another cloak.

Joffrey was kept away from the Stark girl in the week or two following the incident in the throne room.  _ Incident. _ That was the word the queen had used when she said that a repeat was to be avoided. A fucking  _ incident.  _

 

It didn’t take much to keep Joffrey’s path from crossing Sansa’s. Stannis’ forces had mobilized, news had come through Varys' little birds that a fleet was sailing for King’s Landing. 

 

“Fix it!” the king had been heard shrieking at Tyrion during a small council meeting. The Queen ushered him out, saying how she wished to see the way his new crossbow worked. 

 

The Hound didn’t know what trap Tyrion had been laid for Stannis’ fleet, but he had his suspicious. They were doing something at the Mud Gate, the one by the bay. Sandor suspected some kind of netting in the water, netting in the sand. 

 

When the night of the battle came he wasn’t expecting Wildfire. 

 

Tyrion and his squire and bodyguard were on the wall overlooking the Bay when Sandor arrived behind the King. 

 

“Well?” he asked immediately. “Where are the ships?”

 

“I don’t know.” Tyrion was staring tensely between two ramparts. 

 

They hovered there for about a half hour before one lonely ship came into view, it’s black sails marking it as either a smuggling vessel or an enemy of the crown.  _ If there’s one there’s more,  _ muttered Tyrion. He gave Bronn the command, and the sellsword shot a flaming arrow into the center of the bay. There was a sucking silence, like the sky had taken a deep breath and taken all the oxygen from the city, and then with a  _ whoosh  _ and a retina-searing flash of green the world seemingly exploded. 

 

Sandor was frozen in terror. Flames danced across the beach, across the surface of the water and the boats and the sailors. The low-hanging clouds reflected the sickly glow of the flames, reflected a green not made by gods or nature until the King’s face glowed with it, until the horror on Tyrion’s face was visible as if by day, until the color seemed to swallow the earth. 

 

The air already smelled of heat and thick black smoke. Sandor came back to himself, saw the gleeful wonder in the King’s eyes, and had to turn away. 

 

A few ships that had been at the back of the fleet made it to the beach. Tyrion send the Hound down to lead the Lannister forced through the Mud Gate. Well, lead wasn’t exactly the right term.

 

In Sandor’s experience if you  _ lead  _ men into battle the stragglers may never actually make it to the war. If you  _ chased  _ men into battle they always got there. 

 

The Hound ran through the Mud Gate after the Lannister forces, bellowing, “Any man dies with a clean sword, I’ll rape his fucking corpse!”

 

The Lannister troops fought, they fought with the fear and desperation of men who know what happens to opposing soldiers if a city falls, but it wasn’t enough. Stannis had an army: even with the initial wave torched by the wildfire it wasn’t enough.

 

The air smelled of smoke; burning flesh and hair and wood. It turned Sandor’s stomach and made his scars ache. 

 

He wondered if any of the fucking Lannisters knew what it meant to burn; to feel your flesh bubble on the bone, to smell the char of your own hair. He fought his way back to the gate and through it. He was prepared to die for the Lannisters, to be hacked apart in battle or bleed to death on the ground. He wasn’t going to burn again for anyone. 

 

“Give me a drink!” he bellowed. A piss-scared squire thrust a skin into his hand. He took a gulp and threw the skin back. “Fuck water, give me wine!” 

 

He drained the vessel and tossed it onto the hard-packed dirt. As he moved to walk away Tyrion came tearing down the steps. “Shall I get you an iced milk and some raspberries?” he drawled. “Your king commands you to go out there and fight!”

 

“Fuck the city. Fuck the king.” He moved off into the quiet gloom of the keep, confident that in this moment there wasn’t a man brave enough to come after him. 

 

Eerie green light prevailed here, too. Sandor snatched a pitcher of wine out of the first bedchamber he came to. He wondered if this was what it was like at the bottom of the Dornish sea, all silence and wavering green light. 

 

Sandor wandered into the Women’s Wing, let himself into a bedroom (it even smelled of females in here, like laundry and lavender) and sat down on the bed to wait. 

 

He awoke (he was getting old, two pitchers of wine and he was asleep) when the door creaked open. He was a light sleeper, had become one in childhood out of necessity. 

 

Light little footsteps went  _ patpatpat  _ over to the heavy wardrobe. A drawer opened, and he saw the girl bent over something. “Are the ladies starting to panic?” he said from the bed, and she jumped and dropped whatever she had been holding. She wouldn’t be here if the queen were still under the throne room. 

 

“What are you doing here?” Sansa asked.

 

“Not here for long. I’m leaving.”

 

“Where are you going?” she relied, curious. 

 

“Some place that isn’t burning. North, might be. Could be.” He looked at her then, met her eyes, and hoped she understood. 

 

“What of the king?” 

 

Sandor heard hope in her voice then, the hope that her prayers had been answered and that Joffrey was gone and could never hurt her again. 

 

“Fuck the king. He can die just fine on his own.”

 

She slumped then, just a little, her shadow wavering in the light of her candle stub. 

 

“You still owe me a song,” he said, moving to stand by her.  _ Stop being a twat Clegane, pick her up and drag her out of here, she’ll thank you in the morning when she doesn’t wake up dead. _

 

“Um,” she said, staring at his chest (only inches from her nose now).

 

“Sing, lass.”

 

“ _ Gentle mother, font of mercy…”  _ It was all that came to mind, a hymn once sung by her own mother. Eventually her voice trailed off, thin and tired, not able to remember the next verse. Instinct told her to put a hand to his cheek. She felt the thick tackiness of congealed blood and the warm wetness of tears over the pitted, scarred skin. 

 

“I could keep you safe,” he rasped, his voice full of smoke and fear and self-loathing. “They’re all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I’d kill them.

 

“You wouldn’t hurt me.”

 

“No, little bird, I won’t hurt you.”

 

Sandor stepped away, ripped the burned and bloody cloak from his shoulders ( _ how stupid he was to think he could wear the King'sguard white, to think he could use it to save this girl)  _ and draped it over her once more. 

 

[Sansa curled in the cloak there on the floor when the door was shut, when he was gone. She replayed the conversation back, over and over, until she realized what he had been offering, what he was trying to tell her. She played it back until she wept with her own stupidity,  because he and Tyrion had been the only ones in King's Landing who had been nice to her, had been the only ones to interfere with Joffrey, and she had sent one of them away.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys, I just need to talk about how boring this chapter was. I'm SORRY. My muse (or the devil on my shoulder or my own personal brand of madness) just deserted me for this. I think this book/episode has been discussed so much that I couldn't add anything to it. I'm so frustrated with this chapter that I'm posting Chapter 6 at the same time. 
> 
> As always, thank you for getting this far. I'd love the chance to discuss our mutual fav, Sandor motherfucking Clegane. 
> 
> Best,   
> Chris


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor meets the Brotherhood without Banners and the little Stark bitch.  
> They show up late to the Red Wedding.   
> Sandor hopes he's forgiven.

The little wolf-bitch was as different from her sister in personality as she was in looks. Sandor had been with her for less than a full day when she tried to kill him. He respected that, considering that he  _ was  _ her captor. 

 

He’d been out of King’s Landing for a fortnight when the fucking Brotherhood without Banners had caught him. They’d had the girl too, thinking her just an average runaway. He didn’t know how the fire-obsessed fucks had ever thought that; she and the bastard were the only ones with the Stark look about them. 

 

He’d fought and killed Beric Dondarrion, the tourney cunt with the flaming sword. Apparently that washed away his crimes in the eyes of their god (he’d planned on having a good laugh about that later) and he was free to go. The Stark bitch had escaped as well, running blindly off into the forest without food or a horse or a plan. He’d grabbed her and flung her onto Stranger with him. 

 

She’d given him the silent treatment as they rode west, her little face sullen. It was dawn now, and she thought she’d snuck up on him while he slept. She wasn’t the loudest walker he’d ever heard, but Sandor Clegane had learned to sleep lightly long, long ago (in a little manor house by Casterly Rock where he slept under the same roof as his brother) and so he’d woken to the sound of her sneaking off to piss and had heard her prying the great rock out of the ground.

 

“I’ll give you one chance to kill me, girl,” he growled, voice still gravelly with sleep.  “If you do it you’re free, but if you don’t I’ll break both your fucking hands.

 

She held the rock over her head for a second more, debating. Sandor could see the thoughts flickering over her expressive face. She dropped the rock and stomped off. 

 

As he saddled Stranger Sandor debated what to do with the girl. Her mother and brother would likely pay well for her, and it would be another snub to the Lannisters. He could take the gold and stay somewhere in the north maybe, or Braavos; somewhere cool where the Lannister’s didn’t hold sway… which excluded most of this bloody continent. 

 

He gnawed on a hard roll of bread as they rode northeast towards the rising son. Arya was giving him the silent treatment again. He thought that really was quite funny, the idea that not talking to him would somehow felt like a punishment. So far her silence was his very favorite thing about the wolf-whelp. He offered her the rest of the bread and she turned her face away, nose in the air. Sandor shrugged and finished it. 

 

“Is that the Blackwater Rush?” she asked as they paused at the top of the rise. It was the first thing she’d said to him all day. Arya was definitely his favorite noble lady. Not that you’d call her a lady by looking at her. Someone had cut all her hair off in a raggedy attempt to emulate the style of young southern boys. It had worked surprisingly well. 

 

“The Blackwater? Where the fuck do you think I’m taking you?”

 

“Back to King's Landing, to give me to the Lannisters.” It wasn’t quite a question.

 

“Fuck the Lannisters; this is the Red Fork. I’m taking you to Riverrun.”

 

“Why?” 

 

“Your mother and brother are there. Word is your uncle is getting married. I’ll sell you back to them.”

 

This time when he offered her a hard lump of cheese she took it.

 

By the time they got to Riverrun the wedding seemed to be underway. Carts laden with venison, vegetables, and still-steaming bread were trundling over the little bridge and into the keep. Sandor wasn’t comfortable just riding into the courtyard with his fucking face and the little Stark princess perched in his lap. He didn’t think he’d make it very far. 

 

He walked back down from the ridge where he’d been sitting and watching the castle. Arya was sitting by the spitting little fire scrubbing Stranger’s tack. It was something else he understood in her; he couldn’t sit still and just think either. He didn’t like himself enough to keep his own company. If he was going to be stuck just sitting somewhere he wanted to do it with a full flagon of wine in his hand. Sandor didn’t think Arya hated herself (though he knew bugger all about little girls), so he suspected that in her quiet moments the horrors that had befallen her family and the precariousness of her whole situation threatened to overwhelm her. 

 

He sat by the fire and ran a cloth over the bridle. After a few more minutes the sound of a wooden cart came rumbling along. The driver waved cheerily at them, hit a rut, and the wheel popped off the back axle. Sandor walked over to the man and lifted the cart (full of pig parts) so the man could shove it back on. 

 

“It’s been bloody terrible. Broke three spokes on the road just getting here. Thanks for your help.”

 

Sandor punched him hard in the jaw. Drawing his dagger he leaned over the man and then Arya jumped in front of him. 

 

“Don’t! He didn’t do anything!”

 

“Dead rats don’t squeak,” he responded, and moved to lean around the little wolf-bitch.

 

“Does it bring you joy?” she shouted, thrusting her little face towards him. “Do you like saying scary things and threatening little girls?”

 

She was passionate in her rage, her cheeks flushed and her eyes locked onto his own. He’d respected her for that since he’d met her in the cave with the Brotherhood fuckwits; she hated him because of the things that he had done, not for his name or his face. She had always met his eyes. He respected that. 

 

“Have it your way, girl.” He manhandled the unconscious farmer off the road, past their fire, and into the woods. He gagged the man and tied him to a tree. Then he led Stranger into the same patch of woods and tied him to the next tree. By this time the man was awake and night was falling. “If anything happens to the horse, it’ll be your neck.”

 

[Sansa had once asked something so similar, had asked if scaring people brought him joy. They’d both asked now, though Arya had been the one to look him squarely in the face. Maybe in the north they asked hard questions of each other, or maybe Sandor had become accustomed to the fakery of the capitol.]

 

Arya had already kicked dirt over the fire. They crawled into the seat of the wagon and moved down the hill. Torches had already been lit along the little bridge into the courtyard. Sandor pulled his cloak up to shadow his face and stopped in front of the guards, the wagon horses pawing at the dirty straw spread over the courtyard.  

 

“Got pork for the wedding.” 

 

“The wedding’s over,” one of the guards said. “Go home.”

 

The sound of screaming and laughing men cheering echoed out of the keep. “Got pig’s feet too,” said Sandor, still hoping to get into the great hall. 

 

“Are you slow in the head?” the guard asked, peering into the gloom of Sandor’s cloak. “Get out of here!”

 

Sandor glanced back over the bridge. A group of Frey and Lannister soldiers were coming across now and leading a horse. “The King of the North” they were shouting. Some held up wineskins for toasts. “The Young Wolf!” they screamed. 

 

Sandor knew what was happening, now. He could feel the siren-call of bloodlust thrumming in his veins, the thick war-drum heartbeat that seemed to be throbbing from the keep itself. Slaughter had been done this night; the mob of soldiers were spattered in heartsblood that looked black in the wavering torchlight. 

 

It was Robb Stark’s body on the back of the horse. Men were pouring out of the keep now, too, joining in the chanting and toasting as they paraded around the corpse of the northman. His torso had been tied to a staff to hold him upright. Where his head had been was now sewn the head of his direwolf, the fur matted with blood. 

 

Sandor glanced in the back of the wagon to see how Arya was taking this. She was gone. He panicked, thinking one of the soldiers had grabbed her out from under his nose. He saw her marching towards the mob, a sword (from a corpse or the ground or gods knew where) clutched in her left hand, the tip dragging on the ground.  

 

Sandor leapt out of the wagon and ran to her. With the mood this lot were in she would be  _ lucky  _ if they only beheaded her. 

 

“I have to help him!” she shrieked when Sandor grabbed her. “I have to get to my mother!”

 

Sandor clocked her, hoping he didn’t do too much damage. He threw her over his shoulder and grabbed the bridle of a horse still tied to the post outside the keep’s great hall. [He’d carried Sansa like that once, after the Bread Riot that nearly saw Joffrey and half his bloody court ripped apart. She’d been taller and just as light, her little fingers tightly gripping the edge of his plate mail. She’d tried to thank him later, and he’d snarled.] 

 

He tossed Arya’s limp body over the horse’s neck, vaulted into the saddle (the stirrups were too short, he’d go without for now) and pulled Arya against him. 

 

When he’d wheeled the horse towards the bridge he saw that the wagon they’d came in on was burning; saw a man wearing a wolfskin like a cape and flapping its edges to encouraging roars of the crowd.  

 

He couldn’t wield his sword without dislodging Arya from his lap, and he wasn’t about to charge the bridge without a weapon. He ripped a Stark pikestaff out of the ground and kicked the horse into a canter. Arya stirred and took one last look at her brother’s body strapped to the horse. Sandor felt her cling to him then, her fingers gripping the skin at the back of his neck. 

 

He pitied her, the ferocious little wolf without her pack. Sandor had killed his first man when he was twelve, about the age she was now, but this somehow seemed worse. She couldn’t control any of this and was stuck with an old dog to look after her. 

 

She didn’t say anything as they loped back to the farmer and Sandor’s horse. She didn’t say anything when Sandor cut the farmer loose and tossed her in front of Stranger’s saddle. She didn’t say anything as they rode through the night, heading vaguely northwest, though Sandor wasn’t really paying attention to their direction. He was just hoping that Stranger was rested enough to get them well away from Riverrun. 

 

She may have slept at one point, her head resting against Sandor’s chest. He knew she cried, he’d felt a tear hit the back of his wrist. He couldn’t say anything after the events in the courtyard of her mother’s childhood home. There weren’t words for that; it was something out of one of the darker hells. She’d seen firelight flicker over the faces of men still spattered with the blood of her kin. She’d seen her brother’s body desecrated, his direwolf’s head sewn to his shoulders. Bodies were being tossed unceremoniously into the river as they’d cantered away. The air had been full of the coppery smell of blood and the bitter sting of smoke. 

 

Septons in their confident self-righteousness couldn’t have dreamed up anything worse. 

 

She was so quiet the next day that Sandor nearly started to apologize. She didn’t gripe about being so close to him, didn’t ask for her own horse or a sword or some bread. 

 

As the shadows began to stretch across the ground they came across three soldiers camping along the road. Arya glanced at the group before dismissing them, returning her gaze to Stranger’s mane. 

 

“...’NEErrrEEEeeerrrr’ she went, squealed like a stuck pig!” one of the soldiers said, mockingly clutching his throat.

 

“Floating in the river now,” one commented, biting into a rabbit leg.

 

“I had the idea to put the wolf’s head on the pretender,” said the third. “No I did, we had to anchor it in the collarbone…” 

 

And then Arya was behind the first braggart. Sandor yanked Stranger to a halt, silently cursing the little bitch, and caught up to her just as she stabbed the soldier over and over in the neck, still stabbing even when his neck was only loosely attached to his shoulders. 

 

Sandor was on the other two before they could get to her, the killing done quickly and with detachment. 

 

“Where’d you get the knife?” he asked Arya’s back. She was still watching the blood pool on the ground beneath the man she’d killed. 

 

“From you.”  She held up the blade and he snatched it from her fingers.

 

Sandor was furious and proud, the emotions warring within him. He settled on shaking his fist (still with the knife in it) and scolding, “Next time you want to do something like that, tell me first.”

 

He understood the impulse, had given into it too many times to count. Killing was the easiest thing in the world, the simplest; so much easier than arguing. 

 

As they mounted Stranger again (the poor beast; now they had to get away from the dead Frey men) Sandor asked, “Was that the first man you killed?”

 

“The first man,” she replied. There was an air of finality to her words, and Sandor understood it all too well: this was the first man she’d killed, but it wouldn’t be the last. 

 

She killed her next man in an inn full of Lannister soldiers two days later. She and Sandor were hungry, but Sandor wasn’t hungry enough to kill five men on an empty stomach. He told as much to the girl, but she didn’t care; she walked right up to the door for her little fucking sword, her  _ needle.  _

 

There were actually six men inside. Sandor killed five of them, and Arya killed one, using her little reclaimed pigsticker to puncture the man’s jugular. She ended up getting a horse out of the deal too, and Sandor got three whole roast chickens. 

 

As they rode back onto the King’s Road, each mucching on a mouthful of bird, Sandor lectured her. 

 

“Your family is dead. The Lannisters are hunting you, and maybe now the Frey’s as well. You may not care of you die, I may not care if you die  _ (a pang in his gut, he’d think on that later) _ but I bloody well do not want to die, not for your skinny arse. The next time you walk into a group of men like that, you’re going to have to get yourself out.”

 

He glanced back at Arya, riding her fat white horse, and saw her grinning at him (chicken grease spread across both cheeks, oh if her priss of a sister could see her now) as though she knew damn well he was lying. 

 

He told her they were going to the Erie, that he was taking her to her Aunt Lysa. She voiced doubts about her aunt but came along all the same, sometimes humming to herself as they rode higher and higher into the Reach. 

 

It turned out her shriveled prude of an Aunt was dead too. Sandor didn’t believe in gods, but if he did he’d be damn glad he wasn’t a Stark. He was glad he wasn’t a Stark (or a close relative) regardless, in another year it seemed there would be none of their blood left in Westeros. 

 

Arya laughed. She bent over, clutching her stomach, and laughed until her eyes streamed tears. Sandor eyed her, and then eyed the Knights of the Vale that were gathered along the bloody gate. .  He made their excuses and hustled the little madwoman back to their horses.

 

As the rode away, still heading north (it was the fastest way out of these bloody stupid mountains now) they discussed the news they’d learned of the capitol. 

 

“So Joffrey died at his own wedding,” Arya said, and he could hear the joy in her words. “Do you think you could have saved him?”

 

“I wasn’t a bloody food-taster. Poison is a woman’s weapon, men use steel.”

 

“I’d have used whatever I had to,” she said, her voice clanging with the conviction of the very young or mildly insane. “I’d have, I’d have used a chicken bone if I had to!”

 

Sandor laughed then, a deep, true chuckle that bubbled up from under his heart. “I’d have payed good money to see that,” he admitted. 

 

“I wish I was there. I wanted to see the look in his eyes, how he looked when he knew it was over.” Her voice was slightly softer now, contemplative. 

 

“Aye, I know that look. It’s the sweetest thing there is.”

 

They rode quietly for the rest of the afternoon. He understood this girl, and that was a quandry in itself. She was female, and while that wasn’t an impossible block for communication it usually didn’t help. She was also nobly born, and twelve, maybe thirteen. 

 

He glanced back at her. 

 

Nope. Definitely twelve. 

 

But she was an outcast, thrown out of the society she’d been raised in, an outcast from most of her gender. She didn’t have any family left to take her (the age he’d been when he left Lannisport, he remembered) and she understood killing. She both understood it and  _ reveled in it. _

 

Maybe he would take her to the Wall and let her bastard brother deal with her. Maybe they could find some small town and stay for a while, though his scars made that nearly impossible. It would have to be a  _ small  _ town. 

 

They rode together for about two more weeks. He taught her where the heart is, a moment fraught with unspoken messages. He taught her the location of the heart so that she could  _ kill people  _ with the knowledge. It was an acceptance of her wishes and her talents, and he could tell by the steady gaze of her steely northern eyes that she knew. He taught her to make a fire with wet wood and the signs of clean water. He scoffed at her Braavosi water dancing and showed her how a Westerosi man would move, showed her ways that a Westerosi man would leave himself open to attack from her quick little needle. 

 

She cleaned a festering wound in his neck while he told her the story of his burns. 

 

Brienne the Beauty found them two weeks after the inn and the chickens and the reclamation of the little sword. She asked the wolf-girl to accompany her south, promised the little Stark safety as she stood there with a Valyrian-steel sword with a lion’s head pommel. 

 

“What safety?” Sandor roared at that comment. “Her father is dead, her mother and aunt are dead, her brothers are dead and her sister is a captive of the bloody Lannisters. There is no safe place left on this fucking continent!”

 

Arya watched this exchange with her sword out and her face impassive. 

 

“And so what are you doing?” Brienne shouted back, her fair cheeks flushed in anger. “Watching over her? Out of the goodness of your heart?”

 

Sandor ignored the sarcasm. “Yes.” He said this calmly, suddenly meaning it. “That’s what I'm fucking doing.”

 

Brienne lunged at him then, her sword drawn.

 

It was the hardest fight of Sandor’s life. He wasn’t embarrassed to admit this to himself. She fought with desperation and speed and a shocking amount of strength. He disarmed her (while balanced on the edge of a fucking rock outcrop; he  _ hated  _ mountains) and so she tackled him in one smooth dive, the impact throwing them both over the edge They tumbled together over boulders and jagged rocks, punching and kicking. Sandor had lost his sword somewhere in the swirl of fists and inconvenient geology.

 

Brienne landed on top, smashing his face with gauntlet- protected fists. He could feel bone sticking out of his leg, he knew he was done. He closed his eyes and waited for the Stranger to take him.

 

Later he  decided he was still alive, so he opened his eyes. Even that tiny motion hurt. 

 

Arya was staring at him, her eyes calm and steady on his face. He could feel blood sluggishly running down his cheek. 

 

“Do you remember where the heart is?” he rasped. He never expected her to have to use the knowledge on  _ him.  _

 

She nodded. 

 

“Go ahead, then.”

 

The girl didn’t move. 

 

He tried to taunt her into it, tried to remind her of all his crimes. They were still, deadly still for a moment, two pairs of grey eyes locked in a battle of the wills. Sandor blinked, his head slumping back to the rock he was propped up on, and he felt Arya tug his money pouch off of his belt. He opened his eyes, then, and watched her walk away. 

 

He raged for a moment, an hour, a period of time defined only by agony. When he was done raging he realized that Arya had taken him off of her list. She hadn’t helped him, true, but she also hadn’t killed him as she had promised to do for so long. He wasn’t sure if that counted as forgiveness, but he rather hoped it did. Letting out a deep sigh, the Hound surrendered to the darkness. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck the world, my favorite little killer dillers!! God I love the two of them. 
> 
> I promise not to follow canon so closely in the next chapter. It should be more fun. If you make it to Chapter 8 they finally bang!!
> 
> Thank you for reading this far. Comments are super appreciated. 
> 
> Best!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor's life on the Quiet Isle.  
> Insights into Driftwood.  
> Leaving the last peaceful place in Westeros.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's late today! I almost forgot to update.

Sandor spent almost two years looking upon the other side of death on the Quiet Isle. Brother Narbert had found him on the side of that cursed ravine where Brienne had left him, bone poked through his skin and flies feasting on the clotted blood coating his body. He’d been lucid enough to know he was being loaded into a wagon, and then rose from his stupor enough to curse the brothers who had lifted him back out of it. 

 

His healing had been slow. Some of the quieter brothers- in their minds as well as their bodies- had been taken out of the rotation of his caretakers. He raged in his fever, raged in his weakness, weeping and roaring for the last thirty-something years of pain and shame and despair. 

 

When the fever broke it had been almost exclusively the Elder Brother who had sat with him, cleaned him, forced food into him. He was the most humble holy man Sandor had ever met; hadn’t asked Sandor to bow or pray or confess. He just quietly served, asking after Sandor’s pain without judgement or cloying pity, often sitting at Sandor’s bedside and quietly reading. 

 

Sandor later told himself that he’d asked about his faith, the Island, the other men out of boredom; for some stimulation beyond the thick stone walls and squat thatched ceiling of the hut in which he’d been placed. 

 

When he was strong enough to move about he was assigned kitchen duty. He would peel carrots and vegetables while seated at a scrubbed wooden counter, silently assisting the brothers cooking the day’s meal. When the meal was done he moved his stool to the wash basin and scrubbed the wooden trenchers and spoons.  He resented this at first, resented the silence that had been forced upon him and so he would thump the vegetables and band the knives and “accidentally” drop the bowls. 

 

He grew used to the silence. He learned a few of the simpler signs the brothers used to communicate and his leg slowly- so very slowly- began to strengthen. 

 

After kitchen duty he was assigned to carry and fetch for Brother Rawley. The Elder was gentle when he explained Sandor’s knew assignment: “Brother Rawley’s leg was broken in two places by a great black horse that was found the day the Hound died. We had hoped that gelding the beast would ease his transition to the plow, but it seems that in this we would have to subvert the will of the gods themselves.”

 

Sandor was quiet for a moment. He thought harder about what he said now, here in this place where words were treated as the rarest and most dangerous of substances; each one considered carefully and gently put in place like the thin clay pots of wildfire beneath the Red Keep. “This horse-”

 

“We call him Driftwood.”

 

“Driftwood,” said Sandor slowly. “You found him the day the Hound died?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He snuck down the winding wooden stairs that night (pausing once to wait for the sharp ache in his thigh to subside) and visited his horse. He’d saved this horse from the men in King’s Landing who thought such a violent and useless creature was good only for a pit fight with a lion; good only for an evening’s fleeting entertainment. The horse (a gelding now, Sandor remembered with no small amount of distaste) whickered when he saw Sandor approaching.

 

He didn’t talk to the horse that night, just leaned against his powerful shoulder and rested his face against the sleek black neck. Stran- Driftwood stood as solidly as he ever did, soaking in the attention, the mutual affection. 

 

Twice a week the residents of the Island would meet with the Elder Brother in his cozy, carpeted cave. Once was to confess, to discuss the nature of the brother’s sins: why they sinned, who they harmed, how it had affected the sinner and any potential victims. The other meeting was a chance to talk, to question, to ask for guidance in peace and privacy. 

 

“Why did you allow the horse to live?” Sandor asked in one of these meetings. “He cannot be put to the plow; you have no need for a violent warmongering creature.”

 

“He is still one of the god’s creations. He also cannot be blamed for the life that has befallen him, the way he has been used. It is not our place to say what he cannot be.”

 

When Brother Brother Rawley was healed enough to move about on his own Sandor was strong enough for another task. 

 

“You can leave here, with our good wishes. We are not holding you here, you and Driftwood.”

 

Sandor had already considered leaving. He didn’t know what was happening in the outside world anymore and didn’t really care. He didn’t have a place; he’d betrayed the Lannisters, but too little too late for the other houses. He wouldn’t find a place to serve as a sellsword in Westeros; wouldn’t find a House willing to take in the tired old Hound of the most hated family on the continent. 

 

“I’ll stay.”

 

He was given the cowled cloak of the brotherhood the next day, along with a shovel. “Novice,” he was called now. The novice was assigned to dig graves on the windward side of the island. “Who’re going into them?” he asked as he gripped the rough wooden handle of the shovel. “The sick who hurt no more,” was the Elder Brother’s response. 

 

Digging strengthened muscles weakened from sickness and disuse. His leg grew stronger, only aching first thing in the morning when the novice rose from his cot. His hands- scarred and calloused from handling a sword, holding reins, sharpening daggers- grew tough across both palms from digging in the sandy loam of the island. He’d bring Driftwood with him while he dug, allowed the horse to graze and gallop over the hills. 

 

The gravedigger would stand quietly through the services, listening to the weeping of kin, the gentle words of the Elder Brother. After everyone had left the novice alone with his spade again he would cover the linen-shrouded body, left to wonder if there was ever mercy after death, if anyone even deserved it. He remembered the way he’d buried his father and sister, at the way fate seemed to toy with them all. 

 

In his past life, the time before he was called Novice, he was the cause of this grief. He left blood and death in his wake, walked with the Stranger down every road, and yet had managed to avoid the pain and tears and anger that came along with the Reaper. He wasn’t haunted by the faces of the men (and women, and children) that he’d killed because he couldn’t remember them all, because most he didn’t regret. He did wonder what had happened to them; who and mourned for and buried them. 

 

The raiders came when the leaves began to die on the trees, when no one could pretend that summer wasn’t at its end.  The man called Novice was digging more graves, adding two more rectangular holes to the windward, wild side of the island.  He didn’t suspect anything was wrong until he saw the smoke curling into the grey sky. Carrying his shovel he prowled slowly over the crest of the island. Every step he took resembled the walk of a warrior more and more; the way he balanced, the way he turned his chest slightly to the side, the way he held the shovel as a weapon and not a tool. 

 

He found a man in leather and steel sprawled on the stairs of the burning sept, a skin of wine beside him. His skull crunched under the first swing of the shovel; grey brain splattered with the second. 

 

Two other men were in kitchen gorging on cheese and bread and chicken. They rushed him when they saw him enter the building, confident of their odds despite his size. The first was knocked to the ground with a blow to the chest, his neck opened by the blade of the gravedigger’s shovel. 

 

The second was beaten to death, his face a mass of blood and bone. 

 

There were two more raiders total, thin, angry men who ran when they saw the gravedigger coming, his robes spattered with brain and blood. 

 

Sandor buried the brothers, buried the proctors, buried the Elder Brother. It took him a day and a night; they needed so many graves, needed words he didn’t know how to give them. When he had covered the Elder Brother with dew-dampened soil he stood straight, stretching his back, looking over the rows of freshly-mounded graves. “I don’t know if this is my fault,” the novice said. “But you deserved a better world than this one.”

 

He went back down the hill and into his shelter. It had been ransacked, but as he had nothing valuable nothing had been taken. He changed into the jerkin and trews that he’d first worn while here. In a shed he found his horse's tack, his armor (still bloody, still broken), and his sword. 

 

Sandor packed his saddlebags with food and blankets and supplies. He wrote an awkward note for whoever found this devastated place and nailed it to the door of the low kitchen building. He saddled his twice-named horse and rode the Path of Faith, the horse instinctively weaving between deep tidal pools and sucking river mud. 

 

As night fell and the tide began to turn Sandor Clegane rode into the Riverlands, hunting for the men who had disturbed the last peaceful place in Westeros. 

 

He was truly correct about the Quiet Isle being the last remaining bastion of peace in the realm. The first people he met after leaving the Isle were the leaders of the  Brotherhood without Banners again;  _ again,  _ just like it had happened when he left King’s Landing after the Blackwater.

 

They were hanging the men he sought; men who had abandoned the group when times became lean. They didn’t capture him this time, however. He chose to travel with them willingly enough, at least into the North. That was about as far as his plan went. 

 

That changed then he looked into the fire (truly looked at it for the first time in the twenty-nine years since he was burned) and saw an arrow-shaped mountain with an army of the dead marching by. 

 

Sandor (and what remained of the Brotherhood) saw the army of the undead firsthand all too soon. The King in the North, an insane ginger wildling, and an unblooded blacksmith went with them north of the wall to capture a wight. It was a foolish plan, but the only one they had, and Sandor had done stupider things for worse reasons. 

 

He saw a dragon fall from the sky, it’s heartsblood a flaming ruby banner unfurling in the frozen air. He saw the Night King; he carried a wiggling, screaming corpse on his back.  Sandor was one of the first to realize that they were living in a whole different world, they just hadn’t noticed yet. 

 

In the end, fucking Ned Stark was right: Winter had come. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a less adventurous chapter, but I really like it. Thank you for making it this far! Feel free to keep me from just shouting into the void by talking with me (please, please god.)
> 
> Sexy chapter next Sunday!
> 
> ANY IDEAS FOR ANOTHER WORK YOU'D LIKE TO SEE?
> 
> Best,  
> Chris


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THE SEX THAT WAS PROMISED. 
> 
> Or.
> 
> Sandor returns to Winterfell.  
> A reunion with the Stark sisters.  
> And he leaves again.

Five years after the night of the Blackwater, the night even the sky seemed to burn, Sandor saw Sansa again. She stood in almost the exact spot where he’d first glimpsed her- just outside the door of Winterfell’s great hall. She wasn’t a girl anymore, no longer radiated innocence and hope, but there she was. She’d survived; she’d been the first Stark to return to Winterfell. 

 

Her sister was standing beside her, the wolf-bitch with her little dancing sword. Arya smiled that familiar little smile, the one she’d worn when she’d heard that Joffrey had died. 

 

Sandor greeted Arya first. “Wolf bitch.”

 

“Hound.”

 

“Heard you’d been around the world working on that list of yours.”

 

“Not many names left now.”

 

Sandor let out one bitter laugh. “Damn well aren’t. Seems like half the fucking realm is dead.” He could feel Sansa’s eyes watching him, her blue gaze as steady as it ever was. 

 

“He knows about your list?” she asked her sister. 

 

“Oh, yes. We discussed it after I escaped from the Brotherhood Without Banners. We ...traveled together for a while.”

 

Sansa tried not to goggle at her sister. She  _ knew _ she’d been on adventure, had heard from Arya’s own lips how she’d trained to serve the many-faced god of death, that she could now become someone just by taking their face.

 

“He taught me where the heart is,” Arya said, still looking at Sandor. 

 

“And she left me for dead on the side of a ravine,” Sandor said, losing his temper over all the fucking reminiscing. “We both lived. Where’s your brother?”

 

“Jon’s in his war-room with Davos,” Sansa said. “Come on.” 

 

She led him through the cold stone hallways, reminding him of all the times that  _ he’d  _ escorted  _ her  _ through the Red Keep to Joffrey. She didn’t say anything, and so he took that option too. 

 

The door to the war-room was open and Sandor could hear Jon’s voice, as well as Davos’. 

 

“The raven said-” Davos broke off and grinned up at Sandor. “Well it’s good to see your ugly mug. Wasn’t sure Cersei was going to let you leave.”

 

Sandor shrugged. Sansa took a seat at the foot of the big oak table, gazing at the map upside-down.

 

Jon and Davos told him a raven had come from Dragonstone, that Daenerys’ armies of the Unsullied and the Dothraki would arrive in four days time. The remnants of the Greyjoy fleet would be at Eastwatch by the Sea in a day, and that Daenerys would be arriving tomorrow with her dragons to continue discussing strategy. Sandor mostly listened to the other men, tried to think of troop movements, but a part of him was always focused on Sansa. 

 

She was just as pale, just as beautiful, her hair still shining and burnished. She was looking out the window now, watching the snow fall gently and inexorably down. Her chest rose and fell steadily and Sandor got the sense that she wasn’t really here. 

 

“Sansa-” Jon repeated. She turned and looked at her half-brother (the one she’d been so cruel to as a child, the one who had saved her from Ramsay and won back the loyalty of the northern houses).

 

She blinked. “Yes?”

 

“I asked if Daenerys could have your room for the nights she is here. She’s the queen. I’m going to bunk with Davos-” the older man made a face,” -and I thought you could stay with Arya again. That will give us enough space for the queen, Tyrion, Missandei, and Grey Worm.”

 

_ The queen  _ Sansa thought.  _ How easily he said it.  _ “Hmm? Yes, that’s fine. The cook knows to expect arrivals, and I’m having the linens changed this evening. You need to hunt again,” she said absentmindedly. 

 

All three men stared at her for a long moment before Jon cleared his throat. “Right.”

 

They hunted, they strategized, the almost drank Winterfell dry. It took a week of planning, and honestly could have taken less, but one week after the arrival of the bannermen, the Unsullied, and the Dothraki the army of Jon and Daenerys (he refused to be called by a Targaryen name) was ready to head north to join the Wildling forced and those who had been ...borrowed by the Kingslayer. 

 

~~~

 

The night before Jon and Daenerys army rode out to battle Davos went out to walk the frozen grounds and shit, John and the Dragon Queen had gone off to _talk,_ and Missandei and Grey Worm had retired to the room they were apparently sharing. That left Sandor pretty much alone to ponder how in the seven hells he’d ended up sitting in on strategy meetings led by the Targaryen whelp in which they discussed ways to hold back an army of the undead. 

 

He hated that they would all be riding away from Sansa. She’d be left with Arya and Brienne, Sam and Gilly.  The wolf-bitch and Brienne the Beauty were awesome fighters- their sparring sessions always drew a crowd- but two warriors and a fat pussy of a maester weren’t going to do anything against the army of the Night King.

 

Pragmatically, Sandor pointed out to himself that if the army fell and the White Walkers got to Winterfell, Sansa would be only the first of millions of lives taken. Too restless to sleep, he wandered the frigid halls of Winterfell.

 

Sandor saw that light was crackling in the hearth of the bedroom Sansa was sharing with her sister. She was sitting in a wingback chair in front of the fire, her feet as close to the embers as they could possibly be without her fur boots catching fire. She’d turned her head at the sound of footsteps approaching and waved Sandor into the room. He hesitated in the doorway and then came into to room and sat in chair beside hers. He stretched his right leg out, rubbing absently at his thigh.

 

“Where’s your sister?” Sandor asked, walking a few steps into the room. 

 

Sansa glanced at him and then back at the flames. “She’s in Great Hall with Brienne. I gave them both permission to go, to fight. It’s more important that they’re there, that the line holds. There isn’t anything they’d be able to do here to save me, to save anyone, really.”

 

She was right, and her thoughts only echoed his own, but it still made him angry. He sat in the padded chair next to hers without permission. All was quiet for a minute, for five, just the crackle and hiss of the burning logs. 

 

Sansa screwed up her courage and mentally clung to her dignity, to the pieces remaining to her after Ramsay. “I alway regretted not going with you, the night of the Blackwater. I’ve been thinking about it again, thinking that the whole time you and Arya were riding all over the continent it could have been me. I could have avoided Littlefinger, avoided Ramsay, avoided all the pain they caused me.”

 

Sandor didn’t seem surprised at the direction their conversation had gone. “Why didn’t you come with me?” He’d spent years wondering too. 

 

“Because I was still afraid. Because I still wanted all the wrong things. Because I trusted Dontos to get me out,” she whispered. She wanted to have this conversation; she thought he deserved to know before he went to fight an army of the dead and their world came crashing down again, but the telling was hard. In the privacy of her own head she found her girl-self embarrassing; Sansa couldn’t believe she had ever been that utterly stupid. She had wanted a beautiful life with a handsome man and precious children. It had taken her far too long to learn better, but learn she had. 

 

Sandor didn’t want to think about that too much. “Ah,” he murmured. It stung that of all people she’d trusted fucking  _ Dontos  _ more than him. 

 

Silence fell again, and once more Sansa drew her courage about her like a shawl. “I wanted you to know that I learned my lesson. I know better now.”

 

She stood up out of the chair, her movements as smooth and full of grace as they ever were. 

 

Sanding just in front of Sandor she almost whispered, “I still owe you a song.”

 

“You sang to me the night I left,” Sandor replied, voice holding even more rasp; confusion and lust and regret all mixed in there together. 

 

“I didn’t finish,” Sansa said, leaning over, her breath warm against his lips. 

 

It was butterfly light, this gift of a kiss Sandor had never hoped for or thought to expect. Her hand came up to cradle his cheek again, her other supporting her weight on the arm of the chair. 

 

When she moved back, just enough for him to see her face, he stared at her wide-eyed. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, but with no malice in his voice. 

 

“I want to sing with you, Sandor,” she said, face still hovering just inches from his own. 

 

“Why?”

 

The question threw her, and he could see her debating going back to her own chair. He gripped her waist and hauled her into his lap. She fit there, tucked under his chin, and Sandor was suddenly thankful she could no longer see his face. 

 

“I leave tomorrow, little bird. I’m going to fight the Night King with your brother, and there’s a good chance none of us will come back. My luck has to run out sometime, such as it is.” He wasn’t as bitter about his luck or his fate or the gods or whatever some may call it anymore, especially not now with Sansa in his arms. 

 

“That’s why I want this.” It was one of many reasons, really, but she didn’t need to tell Sandor. Her siblings were so  _ strange  _ now; Arya collected faces and seemed to have a history of indiscriminate killing and Bran spent more time looking at the past than he did the present. They terrified and inspired Sansa, she wanted a small taste of their adventure, and here it was. She wanted something just for herself. 

 

“You’re sure?” 

 

She nodded, the top of her head brushing against the scruff under his chin. “I’m sure.”

 

He made a fist in her hair ( _ god _ , that hair; the hair that he’d fantasized about more times than he could count; the hair he’d always wanted to see tickling his thighs as she rode him astride) and hauled back her head so she arched the littlest bit and he could kiss her the way he wanted to. Sandor palmed her breast though far too many layers while gnawing on her bottom lip, gleefully swallowing the  _ eep!  _ Of surprise she made. 

 

She was in a daze when he abruptly set her on her feet, the chill of the room more pointed after being surrounded by his bulk and heat. She was almost comically confused until she noticed him pulling off her fur wrap, her cloak, and then wrestling with the tiny buttons marching down the front of her dress. 

 

She swatted his hand away. “I can handle this. See to yourself.”

 

Sandor sat on the bed and yanked off his boots, not bothering with the laces. His socks were next, tossed on the floor inside out, then his breeches and jacket and shirt and smallclothes until he was left as bare as the day he’d been born. 

 

Sansa was down two dresses but was still wearing a flimsy little underdress type garment, the material washed so many times he could see the darker shadows of her nipples through it. He hadn’t thought he could get any harder, but managed to prove himself wrong. He yanked the garment up over Sansa’s head and kissed her hard when her face appeared again, holding her tightly against him, his erection trapped between them, her breasts pressed to his chest. He turned them slowly, almost as if in a dance, rotating them gently towards the bed. Sansa was still in her small clothes, but he could take care of that soon enough. 

 

Breaking the kiss of they slid naked under the furs (a luxury Sansa had always wanted to experience but had never been able to try, not with five siblings in the house, not with Ramsay). He was over her in an instant, one hand pressing her own into the bed, their fingers intertwined while his mouth sucked and kissed and laved its way down her jaw to her neck to her collarbone to a breast. 

 

“Oh!” she gasped, an excited little inhale as Sandor sucked a nipple into his mouth. He  _ hmmmed  _ a rumbling affirmation of her pleasure as he nibbled and tugged before switching to the other breast. 

 

Her non-pinned hand was running everywhere: down his nose, over the curve of his ear, down his back and then around the front to cautiously explore his chest, fingers toying with his own nipples. 

 

It occurred to Sandor, as he nibbled his way down and around her ribcage, that unless Sansa had managed to meet and take a lover after Ramsay’s death,  _ he,  _ Sandor fucking Clegane,  _ was the very first man she’d actively invited into her bed.  _ He nearly stopped right there, too intimidated by her past, by his own lack of practice, but then he heard her laugh as he delved the tip of his tongue into her belly button. He never thought he would appreciate a woman’s laughter in bed, but this warmed his heart and he continued to cruise south until his mouth hovered over a patch of thick auburn curls guarding her womanhood. Her pussy smelled good even, musky and sweet, and his lessons from Penny in Chataya’s brothel (in a place and time that felt so very far away) came rushing back to him. 

 

Even though she knew it was coming, even though she’d clenched both fists around the bedclothes, Sansa still jumped when Sandor parted her cunt lips with his fingers and licked a hot, wet stripe between them. He set up a rhythm of sucks and licks and gentle probes, and every time Sansa made a noise he hummed back and  _ sweet gods _ if the deep rumble didn’t just run through her sensitized flesh and directly into her unhappily empty womb. 

 

_ Please, Sandor, oh, oh please!  _ She whispered to him, and he barely heard her now as her thighs were clenched so tightly around his ears. He moved his hands to her roving hips, trying to minimize their motion so he could make her come, make his little bird come from the tongue of this lowly dog and then oh, wasn’t she beautiful in her pleasure. He watched her fall apart, the first two fingers of his right hand circling gently over her hard little clit; he watched her breasts heave as she sucked in air, watched the way her back arched off the bed as her feet gripped for purchase, watched the way her hair spread over the pillow and the flush that spread from her chest to her cheeks and the way her lips parted on a moan of his name. 

 

He noticed other things too, as she lay pliant and boneless beneath him. He’d noticed new scars, old scars, memories of cruelty across her body, but chose not to dwell on those. Not tonight.

 

He had a song to sing with his little redbird. 

 

She opened her eyes and looked into his as he settled himself against her; practically purred when he tugged her arms up over her head and held them there. Her eyes were deep navy, the pupil blown wide by pleasure and lust, the lids half closed in blissed-out contentment. It was almost enough to have him finishing then and there like a green lad. 

 

Sansa wiggled and made the most contented  _ mmmm _ Sandor had ever heard, relishing the weight of him, the pressure on her wrists. 

 

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he whispered against her mouth, running his tongue along the fullness of her bottom lip. Still holding her wrists he slid his left hand down her body-lingering on a pebbled nipple- to line himself up with the entrance of her hot, wet pussy. Gradually but steadily he pushed into her until she’d taken him to the root, her hips occasionally giving happy wiggles as she continued to smile up at Sandor. “You’re beautiful too,” she told him. “Just perfect.”

 

Sandor assumed she was talking about his cock. He didn’t care, as that cock was nestled in the tightest, hottest, most  _ perfect  _ cunny it had ever had the pleasure to visit. His hips rocked into Sansa’s, pushing into her and then backing almost all the way out only to plunge again in that most delicious and filling frictions. 

 

It wasn’t exotic sex or even particularly athletic, but it was the best sex either party had ever experienced. Pleasure was given and taken mutually, as were smiles and giggles and kisses and bites. 

 

Sandor was gritting his teeth against his impending release when Sansa began bucking more and more against the weight at her hips, the hand on her wrists. Sandor wasn’t sure if he should let go or slow down or what the hell she needed until she gasped  _ more  _ into his ear and at that point Sandor went blind and deaf and dumb to everything that wasn’t Sansa, wasn’t his red-haired little bird, wasn’t the girl underneath him. He braced himself on her hands, hoping he wasn’t hurting her, and got his other arm between their bodies and to the top of her cunt where he circled and flicked his fingers until suddenly Sansa erupted beneath him, her breath keening through her teeth, her back arching off the bed, her pussy clenching around his dick and wrenching his orgasm from balls that felt like they’d been squeezed for every last drop. 

 

The lay panting together afterwards, curled on their sides and into each other, Sansa’s breath coming in hot gasps against Sandor’s neck. It was too early for Sandor to feel guilty over this; right now he was being held by a woman who found him worthy and who he knew he did not deserve. 

 

“Stay the night,” Sansa murmured as sweat quickly grew cool on their skin. She flexed her fingers in the hair on his chest as he drew the heavy furs over them. 

 

“Aye, little bird. I’ll stay.”

 

He tried not to sleep, even when he felt her go boneless against him, even when her breathing became long and low and even. He tried not to sleep even though he rode into battle tomorrow and needed to be as strong as he could possibly be. He tried not to sleep because he wanted to memorize the feel of this woman against him. 

 

Eventually, despite his best efforts, sleep began to take him. Sandor slowly stroked his hand down Sansa’s back one more time before he drifted off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've made it to the penultimate chapter! Thank you! I really appreciate you giving this story a chance. What did you think of the sex? ;)
> 
> I'm trying to work up a plot for another semi-serious story. If you guys could give me examples of what y'all would like to see, or favorite tropes, I would really appreciate it. 
> 
> So about the last chapter: I was serious about the bittersweet ending. I tried to keep this true to the feeling of the show and books. I mean, we love this story for a reason, right?


	9. Ending Option 1: Realistic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Battle for the Dawn  
> The fate of the living  
> Life goes on.

They rode away the next day, leaving Winterfell housing only an elderly cook, a fat maester and his woman, and Sansa Stark. It wasn’t long, three or four days at most, until the WInterfell forces met up with the rest of the army. Even Bran had joined Jon’s troop. He couldn’t fight, and Jon had warned him that he couldn’t assign anyone to protect Bran, but he’d insisted. He’d told Jon that their forces weren’t only up against an undead army but also the most powerful greenseer in the world. They would need Bran for his information. 

 

Sandor had accepted this. He’d seen too many strange fucking things on this earth now, and a gangly, crippled youth with visions didn’t rank far up on the list. 

 

Even with Bran’s warning they lost almost half their army in the first clash. Daenerys’ dragons had done what they could, but mostly they were too busy trying to chase the undead Viserion away from the living army.  After that it seemed the army was divided into thirds, one third holding off the Night King’s army, one third gathering the newly dead, and the last portion keeping the pyre fires burning as more and more men were thrown into the flames. 

 

It was hard to tell how much time passed during a battle under normal circumstances; the adrenaline and fear could drag a few minutes out into hours or make a whole day of exertion speed by. It was worse now, in  _ this _ fight for  _ this _ cause. A deep darkness had fallen once the Night King had flown onto the battlefield and that night had not ended, the darkness deep in between the deep orange glow of the burning fires. 

 

Sandor slept at some point in the far back corner of what remained of their camp wrapped in as many blankets as he could find. 

 

He ate some bread that he’d thawed over the fire, melted snow for water, and gnawed on a sliver of smoked venison before grabbing his sword and staggering back to the battle front. Brienne came reeling through the smoke and fog and swirling ash, her face stained with soot and blood spattered over her armour and face. 

 

“Are we losing?” Sandor asked, passing her his mug of hot water. 

 

She worked a gauntlet off with her teeth and held the tin cup to warm her fingers before gulping down the contents. “I couldn’t tell,” she said, breath still heavy.  “I haven’t seen Jon in a while, and Daenerys had to switch to Rhaegal so Drogon could rest.” Sandor nodded and waded into the fray.

 

He fought his way through to the funeral fires, fought past them, hacking wights apart with his sword, now almost saw-like in its appearance as Gendry had studded it with dragon glass. He fought a White Walker and saw the wights around it collapse. The joints in his fingers were locked and his leg was stiff and painful by the time there was a lull in the fighting. The air smelled of charred meat and hair and ash swirled down to the ground along with the snow. Soldiers and wights were fighting all around him and all around him the living were falling, their blood staining the snow a black-red. 

 

He heard a shriek beside him, accompanied by the tea-kettle whistle of screaming wights. He glanced  over his shoulder to see Arya being backed out of the circle of light cast by the closest fire. Her little sword (“Needle”, a pussy name if he’d ever heard one, that’s the only reason he remembered) lying in the snow. She had a dragonglass dagger in her hand and managed to stab the wight that had grabbed her but there was another and another and another. 

 

Sandor charged into the group from the back, swinging his sword overhand and cleaving through the dead soldiers. He saw the real problem then: he, and now Arya, had fought their way over to the left flank of the front; a fairly unprotected place where the wights were able to come up out of the gloom on their side without being noticed. 

 

Wights came walking slowly out of the woods. The didn’t run, they didn’t slowly drag themselves, they just walked slowly and steadily and inexorably onward. He could see a dozen coming through the trees, and more were probably behind them. There was always another dead man. There was always another, and another, and another. The living had to win every fight, had to be lucky every time. All the wights had to do to win was keep coming. 

 

He and Arya nodded to each other and cut down the first blue-eyed monsters to approach. They cut down the next wave, and the next, all the while backing towards the ring of light cast by the pile of burning dead. 

 

Sandor knew when the fight turned for them. Wights sensed the kill, were creeping in on all sides. “Go,” he told Arya. “Slip between me and the fire and run to the next one.”

 

“I’m not leaving again,” she shouted, her dagger slipping here and there as she neatly dodged the lurching movements of her undead opponent. 

 

“I said go!” bellowed Sandor, former Hound of the King and last living member of House Clegane. Arya nodded to him and dashed through the gap and around the fire. Sandor took her place, only two steps from the fire now, the heat and stench of it making him sweat. He fought the wights coming in from the northeast that might have followed Arya, he kept his eye (as well as he could) on those approaching from the east. 

 

Sandor fought one handed as he dug in his wool-lined sporran for the little clay pot he’d been given by Jaime Lannister. Each of the soldiers fighting for the living had been given one. “You know when to use it,” had been his perfunctory instructions and he’d considered refusing the little container, but then a scenario very much like this one had slithered through his imagination.

 

Sandor Clegane took one last step back, his boots within inches of the white-hot coals of the fire, and stood his ground. One wight grabbed his arm, another his torso, and he smashed the thin clay pot at his feet. 

 

Reality was suspended for one fraction of a second, one long warm heartbeat when he smelled Sansa, could see the red of her hair.

 

And then the world went green. 

~~~

 

In the end- once the dawn had come- the survivors looked for their comrades, their friends, for all the men (and a few women) with whom they’d marched north. Most were missing and assumed to be dead. Stories were pieced together one detail at a time. 

 

Arya had been the last one to see Sandor Clegane, had known what had happened when she’d seen the flash of brilliant green rip across the battlefield. She’d stumbled upon the body of Brienne, her throat ripped out, and had been forced to drag the noblewoman into the fire herself. 

 

They came home a ragged bunch, maybe one man in ten having lived to see the dawn. 

 

Sansa was waiting with the gates of Winterfell flung open; someone must have had the presence of mind to send her a raven. Her face was impassive as she scanned the bloody, burnt, broken fighters standing before her. She helped Arya into her bed, bandaged wounds, passed out bowls of stew, and kept an eye on Jon, who had yet to say a word. 

 

Arya, over eighteen hours later, was the one to inform Sansa of what had happened to so many of their friends and allies. Gendry was dead, had died in the intital lightning blast from a White Walker dragon. Brienne died before the dawn around the same time as Sandor. Daenerys had died and Jon had a flown a dragon, but only he fully knew what had happened there and he wasn’t telling. 

 

Jaime was dead, after killing Cersei. Bronn had died manning Qyburn’s giant crossbow. Tyrion was missing, as was Jorah. It was assumed that they had been burned along with so many others. 

 

Arya cried when talking of Sandor’s death. Sansa was thankful that she didn’t have to ask for the details. 

 

Routine returned to Winterfell eventually; a new “normal” had descended. Jon was capable of speaking and would occasionally laugh at a joke or whisper to Snow but in general said very little. He turned down the chance to be King of the Seven Kingdoms. Ser Davos had had to jump in front of Jon to stop him from killing the bannerman that raised the idea. 

 

People stopped asking for things of Jon Snow (sometimes called Aegon Targaryen in hushed whispers) after that incident. 

 

Bran had died during the battle but without a mark on his body. Arya thought he’d died while greenseeing through Drogon when the great dragon went down. Podrick had lived and had chosen to remain in Winterfell with the surviving Starks. He said it was what Lady Brienne would have wanted. 

 

It took Sansa a while to realize she was pregnant. She nearly fainted when she put the pieces together, her instincts telling her it was Ramsay’s, that after all this time and from beyond the grave he would finally get the heir he’d always wanted. 

 

It couldn’t be Ramsay’s, she reminded herself. The babe was Sandor’s, planted in her the night before he left to fight for the dawn. 

 

She told her sister even before she found Sam and asked to be examined. “What should I do?” she asked quietly, wishing once again for her mother, for Brienne, for anyone to help her carry this burden. “What will I tell people?”

 

Arya looked at her with that piercing and unblinking grey stare that she wore so often now. “I don’t think you have to tell people anything,” she said after a moment. 

 

“People will notice eventually,” Sansa half laughed, half choked. “My dresses are already tighter. That’s how I realized.” 

 

Arya nodded. “I know. But that doesn’t mean you have to tell anyone anything.”

 

“I’m not married!” Sansa burst out. She wished, not for the first time, that one of her siblings was normal, that  _ anything  _ could be normal. 

 

“...So?” said Arya again, infuriatingly. “We fought for the world, Sansa, and we won. I think we can afford to make some changes to it. Let’s make this world a better one.” 

 

Sansa nodded slowly, the sentiment of her sister’s words finally sinking through the elation and panic that had been swirling in a haze through her mind. People may judge her at first, but why should they? This too could become normal in time. So, so many lives had been lost so that the world could go on, so that  _ life  _ could go on. She and her family were going to live it. 

 

Jon and Arya sat in the huge bed (father and mother’s old bed, a relic now left of a time so far gone) on either side of Sansa as she labored to bring her babe into the world. Jon held her hand so tightly, kept his eyes on her face and firmly reminded her to breathe, to push through the pain. 

 

Arya rubbed Sansa’s aching back and shoulders; snapped at her to push when Sansa said she was too tired to try anymore. 

 

It was night by the time a squalling infant slid into Gilly’s hands. He and his mother were tended, the bedding was changed, and they were left in quiet wonder together for a moment. 

 

Arya and Jon came back in, each staring down at the newest member of the family. 

 

“What shall you call him?” Jon asked, his voice lower that it had once been, back before the long night and the war and the dragons falling from the sky. 

 

Sansa smoothed the tip of her finger down one tiny, downy cheek. Her son opened his eyes: piercing silver-grey. “Honor,” Sansa said. “Honor Stark.”

 

She didn’t think Sandor would mind. His house was gone now, a name he’d always hated lost to posterity. 

 

“There must always be a Stark in Winterfell,” murmured Arya. 

 

And so there was. 

 

THE END. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. This is the ending that feels right; that closes the development arcs and fits with the story. 
> 
> HOWEVER, I knew it would make people mad so I spent about four hours in the middle of the night writing you an alternative ending, which is the next chapter. I'd appreciate it if you all read both; they each have their merits. 
> 
> THANKS FOR STICKING WITH ME!!


	10. Alternate Ending 2: Some Happy Fucking Fluffies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Battle for the Dawn  
> Coming home

Oh, how he was tempted to stay. He’d found a woman who wanted him, a good woman- far better than he deserved- and now he was riding away from her, leaving her on her own. It fit with the rest of his life, though, fuck if it didn’t. Sandor sees a good thing, Sandor loses good thing. Fuck. 

 

Sandor saddled Stranger. Even his horse had changed; he wasn’t the hellhorse Sandor had saved from the King’s Landing stables. Stranger was going on eleven and nearly as scarred as his master. He stood quietly now, no more dancing from side to side, no more threatening teeth when the bridle swung near his face. Stranger knew his job, and so did Sandor.  They were going to die so hopefully others could live, others like Sansa. 

 

The two of them were in a corner of Winterfell’s yard away from the other men. Sandor strapped blankets to the back of the saddle, checked his saddlebags one last time, and surveyed his handiwork. 

 

This was it. A horse and a sword, that’s what he had to show for nearly forty years on this earth. Stranger turned his head to eye his master, nosing Sandor for an extra handful of oats, or maybe a winter-dried apple. The horse may have been named after the god of death, but the damn creature had a sweet tooth. 

 

Man and horse walked to the gate. Jon was up on his horse already, with Arya on her grey next to him. Brienne was behind Arya, and it made him smile for a moment- there were the two most dangerous women left in Westeros, one big, one small, both shockingly deadly. 

 

Sansa passed something up to her sister, her red hair once more shining like a lighthouse in a swirling storm of grey. Sandor looked at her hard, then turned his horse and trotted out of the gates of Winterfell. 

 

It didn’t take them long to join up with the Wildling forces and the army Jaime Lannister had ‘borrowed’ from his sister. Sandor almost laughed at the way Tormund would sidle up to Brienne at mealtimes, or when the leaders would meet up to plan their attack. That was fucking stupid too. You didn’t plan a massacre, it just happened. 

 

Like this was going to. 

 

The wights reached their camp in two days. They were ready, or as ready as they could be. Bran had told them the wights were coming, had warned them of the undead Viserion. Even with a warning, no one was prepared for the sight of Daenery’s dragon flying through the air and spitting flames of lightning, never breathing, never faltering. Just flying, casting no shadow. 

 

The battle was brutal and unending. People fell back to the empty campsite when they needed to, snatched a few hours of sleep and a cup of melted snow. Then they would stumble back into the chaos that was the war. 

 

A third of the forces fed the huge funeral fires that shot ash into the air and tainted the battlefield with the stench of charred flesh and burning hair. As Jon’s forces fell the dead (or dying, those screams were the worst) were dragged into one of the great fires by one of their comrades. It was the only way to keep them from joining the forces of the Night King. 

 

Sandor feared the fire, loathed the fire. He refused to drag anyone into it; when Brienne fell Sandor covered Arya’s back as the smaller warrior dragged her friend into the hungry flames. Everything was confusion. The snow and fog and smoke made it nearly impossible to see who (or what) was running towards you. Dragons screeched and flamed overhead, tinting the smog a deep, throbbing red.  Sandor did his best to watch over the wolf-girl, but the battle ebbed and whirled like a flood, and occasionally he would see her dance by him, her little sword and dagger dancing from hand to hand. 

 

Dawn came, eventually. The darkness melted away when the Night King died. The fog settled and  the snow lightened to fine little flurries sailing to earth to gently bury the now-still bodies of the dead. 

 

The wights fell to earth like mummer’s dolls with the string cut. 

 

The living turned and squinted through the light, trying to get their bearings. The sun didn’t seem to be in the right place, but still…the fires and the dead and the fatigue had them so mixed up that maybe they thought north was in the wrong place. 

 

Jaime fucking Lannister voiced it first: “It’s setting. The sun is setting.”

 

Many fell to their knees and wept, their faces turned towards the light. More just stood where they were with their eyes closed, with their armor and faces and cloaks stained with blood and soot. 

 

Living didn’t guarantee a happy ending. Words like  _ happy  _ didn’t apply to people who had stood so close to death for so long that they already had one foot over the door into the Stranger’s land. They went through the motions. They were a pair of hands to tie the bandage, they were the arms that lugged their comrades to the fire, they were the backs that built stretchers and shelters for the wounded. The survivors for the War of the Dawn couldn’t be  _ people,  _ they couldn’t allow themselves the luxury of emotion. 

 

Eventually, though, the most pressing tasks were complete. The wounded were safe and being treated, food was incoming from the remaining northern houses, and the tally of the dead was slowly being compiled. 

 

Sandor waited with Arya- wolf bitch didn’t seem appropriate now- until her brother and the Dragon Queen were ready to depart. Daenerys rode a horse away from the battlefield. Her dragons were gone; it had taken Drogon and Rhaegon together to bring down their undead brother. The dragons had been painstakingly buried, for even dead no fire could pierce their skin. 

 

Maybe one in ten soldiers had survived the war. It was a small band that worked its way back to Winterfell; moving slowly for the wounded. The gates were open- Sansa was welcoming them home. 

 

Tormund and the remaining Wildlings were straggling to Winterfell as well. Jon had promised them safety on his land as long as he lived, and the knowledge of his true parentage wasn’t changing that. He was going home, home to Winterfell, and not even the blonde who rode beside him was changing that. 

 

Sandor had been fine- had though he was fine- until he saw Sansa by the door to the Great Hall once more. She was pale, even for her, and when she saw the group that straggled into the yard Sandor saw her fingers clench on the frogs of her cloak. 

 

She crushed Arya to her when the younger girl slid off her horse and into her sister’s arms. She hugged Jon, and then hesitated before embracing Daenerys. Others filled the yard- northmen and wildlings alike- but everything seemed to fade into the background when she looked at Sandor. 

 

Sandor wasn’t sure what he wanted. He wanted her to come hug her like she did the others, he wanted her to kiss him, he wanted her to pretend their night had never happened because even now, when the seven hells seemed to be here on earth with them, he didn’t think he could ever deserve her. 

 

She came to him anyway, threw her arms around his armor and squeezed as tightly as she could. He let himself cup the back of her head, digging his fingers into her hair,  before stepping away. 

 

Winter continued. Even though the Dawn had come winter wouldn’t be denied, and even the heated halls of Winterfell were cool. This led to the survivors bunking together and spending more time huddled under furs in the great hall; fewer rooms had to be simultaneously heated this way. 

 

Sansa slept with Sandor. He didn’t come to her room, no, the wench chased him through the castle. She hadn’t come to him the first night, she’d shared her sister’s bed and they’d cried together. He’d listened to them for a long time before seeking rest himself.

 

The next night, though, she had come to him. He’d been given a little chamber in the family wing and in she’d crept. Into the room, into his bed, into his arms. 

 

It was the same the next night, though he told her he was no good for her. 

 

He switched rooms, but she found him. 

 

After 34 nights he agreed just to come to her in her own chambers. She smiled and kissed him and reached for his cock under the furs, but he gripped her hand and held it away. 

 

She cried, eventually. Sometime around night fifty she cried and asked him what was wrong, why he didn’t want her anymore. He explained (haltingly, because he was explaining things to himself only seconds before he had to tell her) that he hadn’t really planned on living. 

 

He was trying to give himself that one good memory the night that he let himself go to her bed. But now, to be together now would imply a future, would imply making roots here among her family. 

 

He didn’t mind that, now that he thought of it. 

 

The next night when he crawled into her- their- bed, he undressed her under the furs, caressed those scars he’d ignored before, and endeavored to worship her every way he knew how. At some point (when she was hot and wet around him, when her fingertips were scoring their way across his chest) he realized that his problem with religion was that he was supposed to be worshipping a lord. He’d already said it once: all the Lords he’d met had been twats, so why would the gods be any different? 

 

He hadn’t tried praying to a lady.

 

This lady, the red-haired lady currently panting down at him as her hair surrounded them like a vestry curtain. He was going to worship at her altar with ever fiber of his being; he would love her until the end of his days-which was convenient, since that was exactly what she planned to do with him.

 

THE END.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this is the only way I could picture a happy ending, I am CRITICALLY BROKEN. I hope you will read both endings, I kind of like them both.
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me! This is the longest thing I have finished to date. I appreciate all of you who have encouraged me, especially leobrat. <3


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